My journey

We can allow traumatic events to dictate how we should live, or we can take control of our lives and choose our way of being. Trauma can either move us to create a new life or live hopelessly gripped by pain. We can allow upheavals in life to remove possibilities, or we can choose to see more of them. We get to decide how we perceive our life stories and whether we assume defeat or triumph. The power I had to decide was not always apparent to me. However, I received a second chance to accept a new way of being. 

Trauma has a way of overshadowing our divinity. Instead of looking within ourselves for strength and answers, we latch on to destructive and addictive behavior. I experienced childhood abuse and neglect. The resentment and rage I felt seeped into my adulthood. I allowed myself to believe that survival came from outside forces. Without understanding my power, I took on the role of an addict that became an explosive mix of alcohol, sex, and drugs. Living as an addict led me into a violent relationship that silenced my voice and covered me in loneliness. My extreme desperation reached levels I had never experienced. As I screamed while gripping the wheel driving on the highway, my child in the backseat, I combated with my chaotic escape. I had no money and did not immediately know my destination. I had my child, my tears, my loneliness, and my fragmented will to live.

My will gave me pause to consider the capacity I had to see a glimpse of a new life. I started to wonder why I hadn’t considered my potential to make different choices years earlier. It occurred to me that, although my life was distorted, I survived childhood trauma because I was still alive. I realized my power to live had always been within me. Up to that moment, I had searched for some sense of control outside of myself. At that moment on the highway, I made a promise to God that I was going to start choosing power and victory. I made a promise during that drive that I was going to accept the role of champion. 

Since that twenty-two-hour drive on the highway, I choose to live in thriving mode daily. Within a matter of two years, my life is unrecognizable. I have released a book and collaborating on several others. I am an ICF accredited coach, specializing in trauma. Every day my story is a happy ending. However, my narrative is not an exception. I have met women who have lived in silence and survived similar circumstances. While surviving anguish is in itself a feat, there is bountiful potential beyond recovery. 

My faith in God shows me that we are put here on the earth to not only recover from trauma but to flourish. For me, flourishing means that I get to help women take control of their lives by showing them how to shift their perception of traumatic experiences. Through the shift, women will take aligned action, with faith, clarity, confidence, and power in their voice, to move them beyond survival mode into the realm of new possibilities.