My healing journey began 5 years ago when I went through my first 9-month intensive certification program. It blew my world wide open. I learned so much about myself.

My dad killed himself when I was 13 years old, and I preceded with life like nothing even happened. I truly believed I was fine. I only cried twice: the day it happened and at the funeral. After that, I went on with life as normal: spending 20 hours a week training for gymnastics and studying in my spare time to achieve straight A’s, which landed me graduating as valedictorian.

Little did I know at the time, but my overachieving was a coping mechanism. It was a way for me to avoid all of the hard feelings of pain, grief, and anger. The thing is: overachieving is idolized in our culture. So, from the outside, I was doing “really good” but in the inside, I was dying without really knowing it.

Things got worse when college came. My plans to do college gymnastics fell through and I was devastated. I spent my freshman year of college isolating myself and making no friends. I would work out 3 hours a day and barely eat, which ended up in extreme binge eating episodes. Hello, eating disorder and exercise addictions, which, by the way, is just another glorified coping mechanism. So again, here I was looking good to everyone on the outside but hating myself and dying on the inside.

I tried counseling but I HATED IT. Deep down, I knew something needed to change, but I didn’t know what that meant. Then one day, I was listening to a podcast with a woman I had never heard of before, and she was talking about a certification she offered. The next day, I was on a call to sign up with this certification. I literally had no idea what I was getting myself into, but there was something within me telling me that this was something I needed to do (thank you intuition).

Those 9 months were very transformative for me. I became radically self-aware. Aware of my traumas, my childhood conditioning, my bodily sensations; everything I needed to know about myself, I learned through those 9 months.

However, there was still huge part missing to my healing journey. I still wasn’t feeling what I needed to feel. My mind knew what I needed to do but my body didn’t feel safe enough. This is when I came across my next 18-month intensive certification, Trauma Informed Facilitator.

This certification broke my wounds wide open in the best way possible. I released and felt emotions that had been buried inside for years. This was so eye-opening for me because we don’t realize how much our past is affecting our now. If we haven’t taken time to, emotionally & physically, process the hard feelings, they are still weighing us down in one way or another. All of the emotions you shove down don’t just go away; they get stored in the body. Our bodies are smart, we don’t give them enough credit.

Becoming a Certified Trauma Informed Facilitator taught me all about how trauma gets stored in the body. It taught me about the nervous system and the importance of regulating it. Most importantly, it taught me the wisdom of our body. If we cultivate enough safety within our body, then it knows exactly what it needs to do to complete unfinished nervous system responses and suppressed emotions.

You must release your past in order to create the future you want. The only way to release it, is to feel your way through it.

My healing journey was all to bring me back to myself; my true, most expressed, and authentic self. And I am here to guide you back to yourself.