Takeaways & Reflections | Trauma & The Woo
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Episode 25 with Katie Chonacas was difficult for me to hear. I saw myself in her story and, although my experiences have been different, I felt for her, what I had been feeling also for myself. And, that was incredible sadness for what she went through.
In this episode, I reflect more deeply on those experiences and, you’ll also get to learn and understand how it is I found my way to do the work that I do today as both a Certified Grief Specialist and as a Reiki Master.
I share, from Victoria Shaw’s episode (Episode 26) more about my experience with motherhood and my loss of self, and the path I paved on finding my way back to myself. And, not just my adult self, but the inner-child within that loved “all things woo” even as a kid.
The natural wonder of being a kid never left me, just as it hasn’t left you. Life, obligations, and responsibilities have a way of sucking the fun out of life. It’s up to us to bring back the wonder, the mystery, curiosity, and playback into our lives. I share how Reiki has reignited that for me – and within me.
Resources Mentioned:
Quick Link to Previous Episodes:
So anyway, today I’m going to share some of my takeaways things that I would like to reflect on from their episodes. So starting with Katie’s episode, I think with trauma, we tend to have this emotional disconnect from our bodies. Oftentimes, trauma negatively impacts our relationships, and others can trigger similar emotions that we are attempting to stuffed down, ignore, or in some instances, truly disconnect from and bury so deep that the experience and the feelings come in and flashes, almost like flashbacks later in life. And such has been the case for me personally. And, you know, I really haven’t opened up a whole lot about my personal experience in a lot of detail. But Katie’s sharing has actually, it was actually really hard for me to listen to her story. Because I only this year, I’ve had other experiences come up in those flashbacks as I mentioned. But my story started when I was a child. I was molested as a child, I was nine the first time. On another occasion, I was a little bit older. I was 12. And these are the occurrences that I remember my childhood is very, I don’t want to say choppy in my memory.
You know, losing my dad at eight that was very traumatic. And he was sick for quite some time before that. So yeah, just my childhood is not wasn’t ideal. Like it wasn’t. Yeah, I just I feel like that I buried a lot. And so therefore a lot of memories are captured. Not a lot, because I don’t have a lot of pictures to be honest. It’s almost as if I need pictures to remember, I guess. But that time plays out in my mind, like a movie. And so do my cries for help where others were in the home, and no one came to help me. After the second time I was 12. I was silent for two years. Until I wasn’t and and then I was disregarded. Thus, this set the stage for a child who became very angry inside a child who learned that good behavior. That’s an air quotes, by the way, was rewarded with love. Which then created unworthiness issues that I’m actually still working through. Not to mention the ability to say what I need and ask for help.
Learning Resiliency Not by Choice
I learned resiliency, but not by choice. I’ve spoken about this before, maybe in another podcast episode with someone else, or I’m not sure, but it drives me absolutely crazy when people say that children are resilient, because many became that way, not by choice, and children don’t necessarily bounce back or get over it any more than adults do. So children with they’re still developing minds, rather, are changed biologically and chemically, at a cellular level, when there’s trauma, which is an event that is traumatic to them, and not by your definition as the adult. So often, adults don’t understand, you know, what the big deal is, when kids express their emotions in a big way. And the best thing you can do is to without judgment, and was analyzing or criticizing them, is to just listen, you know, and I’m not talking even like these these big experience, these traumatic experiences, I’m talking the little ones to that might not be a big deal to you, but to that child, it’s something traumatic for them, you know, you take their blankie away, or their pet dies into you, it’s like, well, we can replace the pet, you know, we can, we can get a new dog.
My Big T Traumas & The Effect of Trauma
And this is why I talk a lot about with grief in that the first lessons we receive on how to grieve is when we are children. So don’t just assume that, you know, the dog dies, get a new one, hope they bounce back, they’re still emotionally incomplete from that first pet they lost, that was probably their best friend, their first their first love in a way, you know, you just don’t forget your first love, I think there needs to be a little bit more compassion brought in to the relationships that children develop. So anyway, that’s kind of a side tangent. I mentioned that though, because by the time I was 18, I had had several big T traumas, but also little ones, too, you know, with the animals, you know, with the dogs that I had to give away and couldn’t keep or friends moving away. So by the age of 18, I’d already experienced those, like I said, several big t traumas. And as Dr. Victoria Shaw called them in Episode 26, and adulthood to me, like, equated this, in many ways, freedom, I saw myself in Katy second experience more than once. And if you haven’t listened to that episode, this won’t make much sense, maybe until you do. But alcohol was my best friend for several years. And as a result, I just didn’t care about much else, I should have lost my job, I nearly lost my license, my driver’s license, I ruined my credit. And when it all came to a head, I am pretty amazed looking back that I wasn’t using more alcohol or something other than alcohol. But there was one I’d buried so deeply that as I speak about it, I still don’t fully know what happened. And that’s the scary thing about trauma. It can rare, it’s buried ugly head, when you least expect it. I experienced a first a flashback during my Reiki one and two certification.
And what has followed has been more moments like that the impact it’s had on me and my marriage, not necessarily in a bad way. It’s brought to the bend brought to the light to be healed. Did it feel good? No. But it did it. I mean, to be honest, it did have some negative impact on my marriage. Because a trauma like that, that you can’t really explain, you really don’t know. What do you do with that, right? So still working through that our shadow selves. The sides of us that come out when we’re stressed, angry or sad, are tied to those parts of ourselves that are asking to be healed. And so for me giving up alcohol completely cold turkey. It was a year in November, which I still fully can’t explain. Because I don’t even crave it wasn’t that was a necessary step to heal everything else because my relationship to alcohol didn’t start in my 20s. Like for many of us, it started for me as a teenager. And there are layers to our lives, chapters of our book that with tender self loving care and self compassion. We can change the narrative of our future chapters. And Katie did that for herself by sharing for the first time her story on my podcast publicly, and it’s led to some much needed conversations in her life healing conversations from what she shared with me since we recorded her Episode two months ago. I hope you find your courage to make the moves you need and the steps you need to heal.
Grief Recovery Can Help You
What that looks like for you, whether it’s seeking outside help going on a healing retreat, beginning a journaling and meditation practice, or simply forgiving yourself. But I must tell you, it is not necessary to confront anyone who has hurt you, physically or otherwise, forgiveness is for you, not the other person. Grief recovery can help you find your way to forgiveness without ever speaking one word to the offender, reach out if you need support. And I’ll put the link in the show notes. The biggest mistake so many of us make is that we think we have to go it alone. Society has taught us that you need to be strong. But like I said, traumas big and small, have a way of rearing their ugly heads when we least expect it. So if you do need support, please, if you don’t reach out to me, reach out to someone.
A Story of Losing Her Beloved Self
Moving on to Victoria’s episode, I’m going to be speaking to the moms, the parents listening. That’s what I am. That’s what this episode was about. To start. It was Victoria’s story of her loss of herself her beloved self as she called her when she became a mother. And I really resonated with that I thought it was a different type of loss that hadn’t been covered on the podcast, one that I relate to, I think, especially when you are in the trenches of motherhood, as I explained to in the episode, sharing how my kids were, I have three children. My oldest is pushing 16, my youngest will be 12 pretty soon and my middle is 14 started a job now my middle one. She’s a waitress got her light cutter permit actually not that long ago. So you know, I’m on the road to an empty nest faster than I really anticipated when they were still three in diapers at one time. And those years are a blur. Absolutely a blur. But there was so much going on for me at that time, personally, and children have a way of bringing up our traumas. So emotionally, I felt like I was going through a lot. I was a single mom, essentially, for much of their younger years. Just because my husband traveled with his job, he was gone quite a bit. So that was challenging. So you kind of lose yourself when you’re so preoccupied with little people. Right? You don’t have time for yourself. It’s hard to make time. I’ll just make the time. Yeah, easier said than done. Right? So yeah, I lost myself in my kids.
And by the time I could actually take a step back and breathe a little boy was I confused. I was so lost, I felt so lost. And it wasn’t until my youngest started was starting kindergarten. And actually, just this week, as I’m recording this, I connected some dots, I realized I had a loss in 2014 of someone who it was really an emotionally charged relationship, because she wasn’t in my life. And the person was my grandmother, my dad’s mother, and I had not connected the dots that you know, she had actually died the month before my youngest started kindergarten. And emotionally, I think I kind of buried what was going on for me during that time when she passed because I had gone to visit her in the nursing home. And it wasn’t a very good visit. I think I went there for some sort of completion, some sort of apology, because when my dad passed, I didn’t as much as even get a birthday card, you know, I was eight, and I just wasn’t in her life. And I don’t know, really the reason completely behind all that. But, you know, adult matters tend to trickle into the children, you know, which is very unfortunate egos get in the way. And the children become collateral damage. So that was me, I felt, you know, really damaged from the fractured relationship, the relationship that never was. And so when I went to see her in the nursing home, I think I was looking for some sort of glimmer in her eye of sorrow, regret, and yeah, an apology that I never got.
And so like in grief recovery, we say, Well, you know, if you’re looking for an apology, you never get you’re stuck in emotional jail. And that’s the thing about forgiveness is that and why it’s for us and not the other person. Because what if you were to forgive someone in person, and they don’t accept it? They don’t accept your apology. You’re stuck in emotional jail, or what if you’re waiting for an apology that you never get? You’re still stuck in emotional jail, right? So that was me. I was stuck in emotional jail, and then my youngest started kindergarten and I really did not connect that not until this week. So that was kind of the tip of the iceberg, I suppose of 2014 when this whole personal development stuff really started to take off for me, I suppose, where I looked for books and things, courses, people that could help me feel better. So yeah, anyway, back to Victoria’s conversation about motherhood.
The Woo of Life
That’s what 2014 the start of 2014 was for me, it was finding my way back to me again, after my youngest started kindergarten. Now, at that same time, if you’ve never listened to an episode, before I got a dog, I told my husband, I needed a dog, because I was really hurting inside and I was looking for a distraction. And I replaced the loss of my child, my last one going to kindergarten of what I now know is like emotional dis ease from that relationship that ended the way it did. That brought up all those old old feelings when she passed. So yeah, that conversation really resonated with me, I listened to it, if you’re a mother probably will resonate with you too. And we got a lot into talking about the Woo, the woo of life. When I say the word Woo. I mean, like the things you can’t explain the spiritual, the mystic intuition, things like that, you know, it can mean astrology can mean palm reading. For some people, you know, they’ll include Tarot in there, for some like pagan type things is a little Woo. I’m not into the Tarot thing I’m not into, there’s some things I’m not really into, or don’t really resonate with me or speak to me, what does speak to me is all about intuition. I’m all about intuition.
And I’m all about the things I can’t explain. And one of the things I can’t explain is Reiki really well, because to this day, after being a practitioner, Reiki practitioner now for Oh, gosh, is it a year, something like that little over a year, it really is hard for me to explain. There’s a mystery to it. That brings out the kid in me. And I’ve really, anyway, I’ll get more into that. But when I say Woo, that’s what I mean. And living where I live, where it’s very rural farming community, you know, where this is German heritage in my area, we’re stubborn, we are stubborn. I will admit that. So Reiki in my area is almost like this thing that the people that come to me, I hear a lot. So many of them say that, well, that’s weird. I’m weird. And, you know, for many years, like when I was a child, I thought I was weird, too. But anyway, so growing up, I was into the mysterious and the unexplainable, and mysticism, I ordered a dream analysis book, as a teen, I read my horoscope read religiously, into my peers, I did feel different from them. Because I was into the different. And when I say different, I’m, you know, air quotes, different as I grew, and responsibilities and obligations of life, those things were kind of shoved to the, to the background, you know, obligations, responsibilities were put to the forefront, and my dreamy mystic, intrigued self went into the shadows. That is until I started to wake up to that side of me, again, the unbelievably curious side of me, because I felt incredibly lost in my life, as I mentioned earlier, and unfulfilled.
And I didn’t know why, by outward appearances, I should have been happy. I had a great family, healthy kids who I was able to raise without the pressures of childcare and the needs, and overall, I was living a blessed life. And there’s grief in that in so much guilt and shame. Like, why can’t you just be content? I would think to myself, How selfish are you for wanting more for yourself? But what was that more? What was it? That’s why I felt so lost. That’s what grief does to us, makes us feel lost. Like, we don’t have choices, all these things. So I felt lost. 2014 lost. And that’s when I started, like I said earlier to seeking out or maybe they found me books, resources, courses, things that would help me elevate my life, evolve, grow through the things I’d experienced. So over the next five years, I would navigate the deep question. We all ask ourselves at one point, and more often than not, it’s during a life changing period in our lives, or life changing event. And the question is, why am I here? The other question is, what is my purpose, which brings me back to the child within me, who was curious about everything.
How Reiki Works
So my journey of self discovery began with having my palms read and doing an immense amount of journaling, meditation, tapping, reading so many books, and finally, grief recovery. And as I began to shed the layers of all that grief through grief recovery work in the personal development and internal stuff I was working through, I was led to Reiki or Reiki phone me kept hearing about it. Reiki, reiki, reiki, I’m like, What? It would pop up everywhere, like what is Reiki? I had a call with a gal that knew more about Reiki than I did. We talked and she shared what she knew with me and so intrigued and curious. And I hadn’t even experienced a Reiki session for myself. And I thought, well, there’s something to this, I listened to my intuition, and I signed up for a class and the rest is history. I went as far as I’ve could have gone. Now as in my certifications, unless I Well, that’s not true, I could actually become a licensed Reiki Master, which can take several years actually take up to three years. I’m not quite there yet. I’m very satisfied with where I’m at, I guess in my development, as far as Reiki goes, but Reiki has been a game changer for me. It has been that thing that has reminded me of my kids self, the child curious about everything, who wondered about the things no one could explain, and has helped me to understand myself on a deeper level. I’ve learned through Reiki, why don’t get squeamish around others deep emotions, how I’m empathic, and feel others people’s energy in the room.
Reiki has given me language to explain why I feel drained, after social events, how I would pick up and take on other people’s energy. But in the past, I didn’t know how to shake as when I was a professional photographer, and I shot weddings, you know, shooting a wedding, it’s, you know, 12 hour day, it’s like a marathon and you’re around people all day, like it’s 12 hours of peopling and I would be wiped two days, it would take me two days to recover from shooting a wedding. I never really understood why I just thought it was like this, you know, the mental and physical bandwidth that goes into it. But it was also people’s energy, like a lot of people’s energy, which is really great, usually for a wedding, but not always, you know, there’s family dynamics where things can be stressful to so but anyway, I just really gained a lot of understanding of my own energy through Reiki.
So coming back to where I live in rural North Dakota, when I tell people in my area, and even at first when I told some of my own family members about Reiki they were like, Huh, what’s that? Reiki just isn’t well known. Not in my area anyway. And the clients I do have have expressed to me what I long felt about myself, as I mentioned, like they, you know, they’re weird. They feel like they’re weird, because they’re into this sort of thing that makes me sad, because they’re feeling embarrassment, for knowing what it is. Because it’s just one of those things. That’s really hard to explain. And this leads me to a question. So if you identify yourself, as a Christian, stick with me, I’m not getting into religion here. Just stick with me. If you identify yourself as a Christian, I’m going to challenge you to consider it doesn’t that isn’t that a little bit Woo, too. Because if you believe in someone, you neither see, nor hear out loud and can’t explain in a lot of ways, like what it what that faith is believing and not seeing, like, if you can’t if I mean, that’s really hard to explain for Christians, I’m a Christian, that’s really hard to explain, right? To have this inner knowing this faith of what you cannot see, and you cannot hear as a Christian. That’s a little bit woo isn’t it? I don’t know. That’s what came up for me as I was thinking about this. It’s like we believe in something we cannot see. And we cannot hear. And that’s Reiki. That’s Reiki for me.
How Reiki Can Enhanced Faith Relationship
You know, people might say, You’re weird for being a Christian. I don’t know. There’s some people that would maybe, but kind of the same side of the coin for me. So I suppose just as I have blind faith and Jesus, I have blind faith and Reiki and it’s just opened up a spiritual connection for me to a higher power greater than my own. It’s actually really enhanced my relationship my faith relationship. I feel like I’m simply a conduit for the love and the light energy that is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. As a result of the work that I’ve been doing. I feel more tapped into my intuition and inner knowing the night ever have an a part of that is because I’ve removed the many cloaks that I’ve worn and the veil that grief had put over my eyes. Eyes and over my soul. When our hearts get convoluted in our logical minds full of Monkey chatter, we find it really difficult to see which way is up much less know when our heart is guiding us to something better when we clear a path from our hearts to our higher selves, and we pull the weeds along the way, and trim the bushes our lives, blossom and thrive. Each of us has to find our own way on what the path clearing will entail. And will each utilize or be called to something different different modalities or people that help us do that.
My takeaway for you, is to listen to your nudges and poopoo, the logical mind that wants to question and second guess whether you find yourself knee deep in diapers, packing up the last kid for college, or questioning what you want to do with your life after a devastating loss. Consider that the energy of grief you may be carrying loss of self identity of who you once were, and the unknown of what’s to come. Perhaps the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations are what you wish would have been different, better or more, or would be different, better or more. These are feelings of grief. If you feel deeply and identify yourself as an empath, like myself, embrace this as a gift, not a curse, as I did for so long. Resist getting locked into your pain story. And choose action towards healing. When you get the nudges as victorious son, or episode, no part of the human experience is wasted.
Curiosity Led Me Into Healing
I want to leave you with this amazing awareness I had while editing. It was 10:20 when we recorded our episode, and I shared how my dad hasn’t come to me in my dreams in her episode. So if you haven’t listened to it, then you’ll This will make sense. But three days later, during my Karuna holy fire certification training, we did a guided healing meditation.
And guess what? My dad came to me. I was a child in this vision. And I came out of that meditation very different than I went in. It was a profoundly healing meditation. And the message I received was that I wasn’t ready until now. And I did not make this connection until I was editing your episode. So what we need to know comes to us in divine timing. And that may sound a little Woo. And I don’t care. Because I’m a little Woo. And I’m not embarrassed. I don’t feel weird. I’m embracing that inner child in me that loves all the things I can’t explain. Curiosity has led to so much healing for me. Because when I’ve been curious about something and I’ve followed that nudge. It led me to Reiki it led me to grief recovery first. But it led to so many things before that since 2014 when I started this personal development and my own healing. So and embrace it. As you know if you are an empath and you feel deeply. It’s not something to curse in your life, like I did for so long. Embrace it as a gift.
P.S. Thank you so much for listening today. We went deep. Like I love like I love doing. So I hope you found this episode. Inspiring, insightful, helpful. All the things If you did, please share it with someone you love and care about. Or give me five star review, which would be lovely. And it’s good karma. It’s just good karma. So, thank you again for being here. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.