Healing childhood trauma.

The thing about childhood trauma is that, in many cases, you don't ACTUALLY know you've been traumatized when it's happening.

The reality is that it's incredibly rare to NOT have been traumatized in childhood. Any sort of familial or societal conditioning has a traumatic impact on our physical bodies (not to mention our souls).

As children, we are so incredibly resilient and adaptable, that we normalize these things in real time. We hardly skip a beat as our bodies absorb the shock and we move on with our lives.

It's not until years later, when we're stretching ourselves, seeking new frontiers, out living outside of our comfort zones, developing intimate relationships with people outside of our family that we discover areas that aren't sitting quite right.

We get triggered and don't really understand why. We have feelings that make zero sense. We feel a little crazy, unbalanced, STRESSED, like life is happening to us and we are out of control.

Sometimes it's painful. At the very least it's uncomfortable, and we're inclined to fight, blame, run away, control, avoid, or totally succumb to our circumstances and not move at all.

This is what it looks like to start to become conscious of patterns that exist and that were unconsciously put into place to protect us, but that are no longer serving us. We know they are no longer serving us because now we're getting triggered by them.

Our purpose and our life journeys rely HEAVILY on us moving through these things with compassion and especially with presence. If we don't, the experiences that trigger us will get louder and more obnoxious.

Because each of us is here to fulfill something extraordinarily unique, and so long as we refuse to look at that, we will continue to have the same stressful, painful, experiences. Over and over again.

Have you diverged from your path?

Personally, I knew I had. I could tell you the exact moment I had the thought, what I was wearing, and where I was standing.

And when I knew it, I had no idea what to do about it. And so I sat and I suffered for another *two years* sure nothing could be done and that this feeling of dread was what adulting was actually about and that the only real reprieve I had available to me was maybe to travel more often to more intrepid places (literally the only time in my life up until that point where I felt free from the burden of the reality I had built for myself in my waking life - one that appeared amazing and successful, but that left me feeling empty and unfulfilled).

The journey to shift back toward your purpose is not an easy ride, but I swear to god it's worth every iota of attention, energy, money, whatever, to get there.

The child you unconsciously (and I would even say, necessarily) left behind needs you now.

And the world needs you to realize your wholeness.

What would happen if - today - you let go of your story that real life = suffering?

What if instead you opened yourself up to possibility?

The freedom you seek, the choices and the options and joy and connection that you're after, exists on the other side of the pain you are currently running away from.