A New Awareness...

I’ll never forget holding Cole, just less than a month old and hearing we were going to war. It was March 20, 2003.  My dad and step mom were visiting, watching the news when we heard. I got up and walked out of the room but said nothing.  My dad, a Vietnam vet, and I had very different views about religion and politics. It was always best to keep quiet.  

I thought the “war” would be short lived and would have little affect on me.  Looking back I see how selfish this was but at the time I was in my early 30’s, in a theater/film crowd, and had just had a baby.  I figured in eighteen years when Cole was old enough to join the military, it would be sorted out. 

When I became a Certified Equus Coach in 2013, one of my dreams was to work with returning soldiers suffering from PTSD. I’m not sure why.  I had yet to meet someone who had returned from Iraq or Afghanistan but sometimes the “why” of our dreams doesn’t make sense until it does. In December of 2013 my dream came true with Save A Warrior.  I got to see first hand the affects of trauma, some of it childhood trauma compounded by war. 

Soon several more clients arrived on my door step suffering from some sort of trauma. I realized I was being given a sign and needed a better understanding so started to research and discovered Peter Levine’s Waking The Tiger, Healing Trauma,’ an incredible book that should be a must read for every human.  As I started to get an understanding of what someone experiences who suffers after a trauma and discovering my own trauma, I also realized that my intuitive abilities come through my “felt sense”  all that energy that is constantly moving just below the surface. 

This is what I feel when I’m working with a client.  I feel their “felt sense” energy in my body and it gives me information. It builds a picture in my mind of the person’s life and I feel their trauma as well.  But I also realized something else. 

Standing in front of my first Save a Warrior Cohort back in March, I felt completely at home with this amazing group of men. I understood their humor, toughness, kindness, and how something about them was just out of reach. For the first time, I completely understood that I was raised by a father (and probably a mother) who suffered from undiagnosed PTSD. 

And then it dawned on me. The “why” of my dream to work with returning soldiers is to heal my own childhood wounds of being raised by a father who was always just out of reach even though he was right next to me.