How do these three words pertain to personal growth and a woman’s healing journey?
Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day and, as the name suggests, we all should pause on that day and reflect on what we are grateful for. Not just reflect, but to truly feel the gratitude in our deepest core.
Well, I didn’t get to that place. I tried really hard, because I know that the vibration of gratitude is one of the highest, and therefore one of the most healing ones there are. But something deeper was going on, something very primal, which thrust me into helplessness, and my brain into flight-or-fight mode.
Kind of like PMS meets Wedding day.
Just like when you know you should be feeling really happy, but instead you’re feeling incredibly low.
Hormones are a powerful thing, and once they are circulating in your body, it’s as if you yourself are out of control.
Men don’t understand.
I know you do.
Even with all the meditation and breathing methods and techniques I have accumulated throughout my life, I couldn’t master those damn hormones and emotions at 3 AM.
They kept me up all night, rolling from one side to the other, having no choice but to listen to the raging voices in my head, tearing apart everything I don’t like about my life, everything that’s going wrong, everything that’s wrong with me. I finally got to the old litany of ”Maybe it would be better to just not exist because this state is just to awful to be in.” I am a mom for Christ’s sake, I am a healing facilitator, I have to have it together!
It was quite the opposite of Thanksgiving.
In the middle of all of this I realized that once again I had given away my power. I had given away my power to Circumstance and out of my own hand.
I started hearing a small voice saying: ”What does your heart want? What does your heart want?” But the noise in my head was still too loud.
I tried harder and harder to get to my heart, to hear its whispers, and finally I did: “All I want is peace.”
“All I want is peace.”
In that moment I remembered.
I started making choices that felt like peace. I smelled the rose on my nightstand and listened to my daughter’s breath right beside me.
Hearing my own heartbeat, I finally could feel the raging hormones calming down.
I was tired. It was 6 am by now, and children were already getting up to play.
But I fell into sleep.
I started resting into my own peace. Grateful at last.
Grateful for the opportunity to, yet again, strengthen the muscle of my own empowerment.
What did I learn that night?
It taught me that, even if something holds us tight in its grip, like a thought pattern, a wound, our pain, a feeling of desperation, despite our feeling of helplessness we always have a choice, if we remember to connect to our own heart.
I realized again that whenever we feel split and in conflict, it is not what’s going on outside, it is the war between our mind and heart.
Our natural tendency is to listen to the mind, because it has the louder voice.
But the freedom lies in listening to our own heart, and following its gentle advice.
I am 33 years old, and I have spent more than half my life both learning and teaching about love.
In Germany, where I am originally from, I am both a Naturopathic doctor and Humanistic Psychotherapist. I have been involved in the field of Personal Development for more than 18 years. I conduct workshops in the United States and Germany, as well as work with clients on a one-to-one basis. I am publishing a book on the subject of healing early sexual trauma, which will be released early next year.
But that’s not what makes me an expert on love, intimacy and relationships. That comes out of my own childhood experiences. Beginning at the age of eleven, I suffered from immense “soul pain” for over 12 years.
Today, I now know that most of this pain was caused by early sexual abuse, which I had no memory of until relatively recently. The result of the trauma resulting from early sexual abuse was that I suffered from serious eating disorders, addictive behavior, co-dependent relationships and depression.
I basically felt “broken” for most of my life, and I desperately and continually needed to do something in order to not feel the pain.
At the age of twenty-one, I finally had what I now call my “Toilet-Wake-Up-Moment”. It was an epiphany, a moment when time stood still, and it became crystal clear to me that, if I continued to do what I had been doing, my life would
be over very, very soon.
There would be no merging with “the one”, no family, no children, no happiness. There would only be a body found on the bathroom floor. My body. One that had suffered a painful and tragic death.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen, Instead, that moment, that epiphany, was the beginning of a journey within. I was incredibly fortunate to have been guided towards some of the most profound teachers in the field of personal healing, and was extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to study with and learn from them.
There was, however, an even greater contribution to my own healing then all the “official” teachers. That turned out to be the numerous men that appeared in my life. Numerous, because I was always in search of the perfect relationship, the perfect man, “the one”.
Each of the relationships was wonderful for a time, than became a lot less so. However, I am now grateful for each one, as it brought me a little closer to the truth about love, intimacy and my very own heart.
Today, I am fully recovered from my early sexual trauma. I am now happily married to “the one” that’s just right for me (instead of the fairy-tale “perfect one”).
We live in beautiful Santa Barbara, California with our two wonderful children, and I now travel around the world, teaching women with a similar history to mine about how they can heal and create a trust-filled, deeply connected relationship with their man.