As I wait for the answer to the results of the meeting that determines if the medical care and treatment that was previously approved just in December is “still” approved and available to me I pick up the pieces of myself that are devastated that I am still having to beg for help from my insurance company at this stage of my healing process.

It has been a month since I have requested access to an approved practitioner to continue my care and continue to manage my medical conditions, and I am still waiting for another round of formal approval.

This is the way that people who live through insurance are forced to operate. It is absolutely cruel.

In order to get formal approval I have to exchange more personal information including them having access to my pelvic floor physiotherapist for her reports too- so they can read all about the progress my pelvic floor is experiencing get them a really clear picture of everything that is not really their business as insurance case managers who lack medical training or trauma informed training. Doctors are barely able to follow the complexity of my medical conditions with my help!!! But sure- here’s another form signing over access to every single piece of me…. Anything else I can do for YOU before you can open the gate to the care I need to survive?

Imagine as an adult having to ask permission to see your doctor, I don’t even have the right to book appointments with the practitioners that are part of my network of care without permission- Then being made to beg again for access to resources essential to my healing- that I had already fought for and had approved.

Help is on the way- but only once the process of me exchanging more dignity and allowing the insurance company that has the vice grip on the neck of my life even MORE access to the practitioners that I have been seeing on my own, and now the insurance company wants access to those practitioners too… the ones we pay for with everything we can spare (or sacrifice other things for) the ones that I have been waiting for independently for over a year- I have to fork over access to all of that too.

I have to jump through hoops and give over every single ounce of dignity and privacy that I have in order to continue to be approved. All while I suffer from the affects of the CPTSD and chronic pain that this type of fighting for my life create for me.

Then on top of it all; I have to have additional appointments with these valuable practitioners for paperwork before I can have access to them for my medical needs- it is absolutely a waste of my very precious energy, and theirs as well being inundated with paperwork for the sake of a process rather than using their time to help patients; seems a lot backwards to me.

It seems like the process’s needs go way before the patients needs here- and the process wins every single time- no matter what the known cost is to me and my body.

At what point do I get the grace to heal in safety with resources around me secure and available to me without me having to even ask?

When can I stop begging for access long enough to actually make progress?

How is it that I have to explain to the groups of people that are supporting me through this mess that I need to feel safe in order to continue healing, that when I don’t feel like I have authority over my life, or access to having my basic needs met as a human on an emotional level that I don’t really have a chance at getting better?

What does it take to survive this all?

Everything that I have. That is what I have given this battle.

Every ounce of energy. Every spare moment. Everything that I had at any given moment is given to this battle to survive.

I have spent nearly two years now figuring this all out. The progress I have seen for myself through this journey has been something that moves me to tears every single time I allow myself to think about the magnitude of my progress.

I am so grateful for my stubborn, or some might say determined nature.

I am grateful for the skills and education that my previous careers and life experiences have afforded me- because it was with those skills that I was able to find my way at least up from the rock bottom place I was left before all of this “help” arrived for me.

There were many many many days, weeks months of my life where it was only me who had me. I was the only one in my corner.

I think we all get like that sometimes, and it is in those moments that we are refined.

Those moments refine us; because they make us ask ourselves what it is that we really want.

What are you going to live for, like really live?

What does that look like for me?

From my bed I contemplated the answers, the real answers to all of these questions and any other questions that I had for myself.

This was the beginning of my journey to healing all of myself.

Prior to being forcibly removed from my life I had just been living in the façade that people are passing off as life these days. I was doing it, unconsciously and it took my life looking real bedridden-like for me to decide that I was going to be a more active part of my own solution.

I started to learn about myself in ways that I hadn’t really thought to learn about myself before.

Some might call it an existential crisis, and by definition they would be absolutely correct… but as far as existential crisis go, I faired pretty good, not bad… if I do say so myself. Considering of course that I like to expedite things, and the universe thinks she is funny- I got to do the existential crisis brought on my surgical medical trauma that triggered CPTSD from my childhood traumas all at once.

I decided I would live. Long before I knew I was curable, before I knew that I had a syndrome and not a disease.

When I found out I was curable was when I really took an even deeper dive into how to heal, what to do for myself as a whole to start seeing real tangible results in my healing progress.

I started with asking what and how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

Then I learned how to do each step as I went.

I did not know what I was doing, really. Only that I knew that I needed to wait, and that I was determined to make my waiting time as bed ridded free as I could. If I have the choice I will not spend the rest of my life in my bed.

It took me a long time to have enough energy to make it through the day without needing to rest. I still need to rest on really bad pain days- and I am even learning that if I rest BEFORE the point of exhaustion it serves me better than being totally depleted and trying to rejuvenate.

I had to learn about pacing for adrenal fatigue in order to learn how to exercise without hurting my body by putting it into an adrenal fatigue cycle.

I had to learn pain science to understand my diagnosis.

I had to learn about embodied trauma, generational trauma and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in order to manage my medical conditions.

I had to learn about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to understand the central nervous system better to help me manage my conditions.

I have to understand biology enough to advocate for the areas that have been abused, I need to protect my organs that have been riddled with damage from over processing.

Turning ptsd into post traumatic growth is a battle that I will choose to stand for every single day.

I chose growth a long time ago, and now I have progress that looks and feels like a post traumatic life is mine for the living!

The endless practitioners, the appointments and the bullshit will always come and go. Focus on progress, and you’ll win every time!

-B.💋

I keep finding these amazing beautiful pieces of myself pieces that I have always kept a little hidden in the shadows because I was told over and over in my life that I was too much.

I have been patiently working on myself and learning that being authentically me is the only way to bring to the feelings to the surface to heal and let healthy me shine through.

The thousands of pieces of myself that felt shattered on the floor have all turned into lessons that I have found and turned into wisdom. These pieces are profound for me as I have been successfully navigating post traumatic growth for some time now.

One piece at a time.

Over and over again; daily, for years, forever, as a lifestyle.

I created a post traumatic growth lifestyle for myself by picking up each piece of me, one by one by one, then utilizing every single skill and resource that I had available to me to put myself back together. I figured it out!

It’s rather complex to articulate, but here is my best effort.

The path to healing is through all of the things you are currently afraid of.

There is no magic pill, or anything like that. So if that is what you are after I will save you my wordy explanations and tell you sorry, this ain’t that.

This isn’t going to be easy. It wasn’t easy for me, my family or those I had to leave behind to grow.

It is hard, but well worth every ounce of effort, paid back to you in the fulfillment feeling you can achieve for your life, loves and legacy you are probably scared to create. I was!

I was scared of losing everything we had worked for. I even wrote it somewhere a thousand times or so in a journal. I was scared of the reality that I was creating right before my eyes.

When I began to observe myself I began to take note of the pieces of me that were facing the most obstacles.

It’s not until I recognized the patterns that I could trace them back to what I believed could be the why for those thoughts, feelings and experiences I was cycling within those patterns.

Once I had the observation I was able to then take a corrective action with myself by using my concept of helping vs hurting.

I observed and judged my situation based on my values, applied what I wanted to do better at, and made my trauma informed decision with all of the facts that I had, plus some research to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. (My ocd is so prominent when I write it out like this… superpower ocd!) I like to be super informed as the CEO of my life.

I make an excellent case for ocd because I over think for the purpose of over-delivery.

My pieces shattered all over the floor it provided opportunity. My life had already kind of imploded all over. My Symptoms were at an all time high due to the stresses that my medical issues placed on every relationship in my life, but most importantly the one I had with myself.

Things were not working so I decided to square one myself in lots of ways. It may have been over-whatever, that’s my style of chaos. I was comfortable there. With everything a mess I started from scratch, and stepped back on square one. I learned about emotions and energy, I learned until I felt confident again.

With all of this I was able to clearly see that I was having altered thought patterns and I shared all of this with people I loved.

As I began to do my work and shift for myself the people that I love were triggered by my trauma healing attempts in whatever ways my journey affected them.

Unfortunately it is often only when people feel triggered themselves that they feel any urgency around cleaning the air about the “pieces of you” that are bothering them.

When someone feels victimized they are unable to actually see that the “pieces of me” that they believe are about me that bother them are actually about the “pieces of them” that they need to bring the light to and find their own lessons. Anytime someone is triggered by you it is a reflection of a hurt inside of them; not you.

I was triggered by a plethora of scenarios that would have seemingly “rolled off my back” but the reality for me is that I hid lots of me to be accepted. I people pleased and left myself last in line for the love that I give so freely to everyone else.

I’ve been traumatized my whole life, and been learning ways to live with it in peace, and love.

We as a society do not respect mental health like we should and trauma is largely ignored, even though it is the root cause of nearly every single disease or syndrome of the central nervous system/ autoimmune system.

There has been no real education or advice that has become a known productive best practice for mental health support of loved ones who are attempting to navigate mental health, let alone getting them safely to post traumatic growth.

But there does come a point when you can start to blame someone for “trying” especially when their trying is blatantly ignorant to your expressed needs. Because no matter what as a human we need to have our expressed needs respected as a baseline. If someone doesn’t have the capacity to respect your needs they do not deserve space in your life. Every human deserves respect as a baseline no matter the relationship, anything less is hurting not helping.

It is when we start to love and respect our authentic selves that we can begin to look at those pieces and turn them into the wisdom that they are intended to be.

Those pieces that you are afraid to look at do not have to have control anymore fear doesn’t have power if you are not afraid. Those pieces only have power because they keep you afraid.

Everyone has pieces, let them be the lessons that turn into the wisdom that propel you forward.

That’s what I’ve done with all the pieces of me!

-B. 💋

You always have a choice, always.

It will not always feel like it, but there is always a choice and it is always yours and only yours to make.

Take your time. Make space to think, decide and respond how you wish to respond.

Make choices that serve your highest intentions. Always remember that people pleasing is a trauma response.

Your mindset is a choice in and of itself.

For some matters you may want to seek outside counsel, advice or expertise these things are all often welcomed and encouraged. Seeking outside advice is lovely, but it ultimately still leaves you with the decision to make. What to do with the advice given by counsel.

Many people get stuck here, and often times it is because the advice they sought came through a transfer case of the other persons personal flavour of limitations, and apply those to their own creating more stuckness feelings from having your own stuff muddled up with someone else’s.

Often times we end up taking on the beliefs of someone else and favouring with what they advised over what we intuitively might be feeling; we do this without realizing it as an underlying response pattern. I most certainly replicated beliefs that weren’t mine to hold on to or to try to embody.

I am a recovering people pleaser, and I always have a choice!

The compound trauma response patterns that stem from being conditioned in the ways that I was as a child affected my brain, literally causing minor brain damage, swelling and inflammation cycles that wreak havoc on my body to this day. This is what cultivated the illness my body struggles with today my traumatic childhood combined with never being loved without conditions, as a result I created self-sabotage habits that compounded over time right alongside my undiagnosed complex trauma. They fed off of eachother.

The antidote to trauma I had decided was closeness, kindness and affection. And when I couldn’t find those things to get what I needed I looked for them in the self sabotaging forms- but low level because my ego wouldn’t allow me to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t be a prescription drug addict my vanity and ego wouldn’t allow me to step to that level. It’s probably the shame I would have endured that kept me away.

My big heart used to take shame right in, that’s how I was abused for a long time! Shame was a punishment in our home, and I was a delinquent.

Emotional connection was not available to me until I figured out how to navigate it for myself by failing at love in the toxic relationships I found myself in along the way.

I found that people never loved me for me, they loved me for people pleasing me ONLY.

That’s when I made the choice to stop people pleasing and be authentic!

I had to slough off so much expectation of myself on behalf of other people.

I had to start moving in patterns that confused people to start breaking free of my old ones.

When I stopped people pleasing the connections that I had in my life as a result of my behaviour were shot out of the sky… and carnage of decades of “love” were left at the rock bottom, and that was my reality.

I was abandoned for refusing to accept being actively abused by people who claim to love me. Who shamed and judged me for how I am achieving my goals on my way to post traumatic growth for myself.

I was abandoned for doing the work, lacking control and grace along the way, and I am okay with it, that is a choice that I made;to be imperfect and authentic.

I choose to be okay with whomever can not accept my journey, they don’t have to!

The bonus part that I learned as a recovering people pleaser is that I don’t have to care about what other people think of me anymore.

If we choose to acknowledge our own needs, alongside someone else acknowledging their own needs it turns any relationship into a beautiful space to hold space for eachother without judgement, jealousy, a desire to adjust an “ism” of the other persons. There is simply space for each person to authentically exist within healthy boundaries.

I don’t know if this makes sense for anyone except those who cope with people pleasing like I did, but I do know that I encounter people who don’t see their choices all the time.

If you begin to release yourself from the invisible obligations that you create, and actually take some time to consider what might make sense for you on a higher level you begin to think in post traumatic growth patterns by looking for choices.

Decide. Choose. Live Authentically. Repeat.

-B.💋

That’s it. A witness to what I was experiencing.

Someone to hold space for what is true for me.

Someone to witness my progressions and my failures as they are, in relation to my journey; not theirs.

Someone to wanted to understand my perspective from more than just a superficial level.

A witness.

It seems so simple, yet very few people are capable of this whole hearted task; to simply witness someone’s experience.

No judgement, no need to influence the outcome, just a witness to what is true for you.

If you truly want to help someone through, just be a loving witness to their journey.

When you are not at your best, the truth is it is hard to let anyone be a witness to the vulnerability that is the healing process. But if you want to heal, being willing to be vulnerable will expedite the process.

The only way out is through, so why not double down and make something really happen for yourself, if the cost is a bit of courage to be vulnerable in exchange for healing, I had to take the chance.

Vulnerability is the currency of healing.

For me, practicing vulnerability has been a challenging task, because of the needing a witness part of healing, because I am traditionally a people pleasing/ self-sabotage type.

My brain nearly exploded when I recognized that the witness was there to see the weaknesses and the lies that I was telling myself too; not just the masks and anti-vulnerability facade’s I used to show the world.

I people pleased as my career, in my life and in my relationships. Pleasing people was much easier on my heart than disappointing people.

Then I realized that the way I was showing up in my life was serving everyone but me I decided to make changes and start to learn how to not excessively show up for people who don’t ever do the same for me.

I learned.

I began setting boundaries.

I began being vulnerable.

I stopped people pleasing and started focusing on what I needed.

Here’s the thing about what happened next; it was the worst case of tough love from the universe I’ve experienced this decade.

I was faced with a choice. I change the way that I think, act and behave, or trauma would probably consume my life and my bed would be where I lived from. I chose no bed. And I knew that my journey would be challenging, so with all my courage I asked for help.

I let the people that I thought could help support my journey by at least witnessing it know what I was experiencing, intimate details. I over shared because I had a false sense of safety.

The people that I had been people pleasing the absolute most all turned their backs on me when I needed to take care of myself. And couldn’t people please anymore.

When I shared my vulnerabilities, raw and authentic, I was intentionally isolated and abandoned by people that I considered family, and some that are literally family.

The people that I had been people pleasing the most were the closest relationships in my life. Our lives were all connected, stitched together apparently by my ability to over please people.

This is very common and not really talked about. The unhealed traumas we all carry with us from what we missed out learning from our parents. We are all in it blind packing our unhealed traumas around hurting eachother with them until we find a witness.

That’s the basics of generational trauma. pick a trauma any trauma, if it is not healed or “handled” in a healthy way you keep repeating the lesson until you learn it, passing the unhealed parts to your children and so on.

Mine is an example of abandonment trauma.

If I don’t behave in a certain way I believe that I am not worthy of acceptance, or love because I was not worthy of love without conditions. That is a belief I used to adhere to. I would people please around it.

Take your family, or those you consider family and look at the dynamics. How often to people you know use their hurt to hurt people? Intentionally or not. How often did you use your hurt to hurt people?

How often has anyone lovingly witnessed your raw vulnerable hurt?

Without judgement?

Everyone is so triggered by people experiencing their own hurt, their own felt emotions that there is never space for the person trying to express themselves, because of someone else having a response to their own stuff.

So here’s the generational trauma healing secret… because some of the people you love simply won’t witness your hurt, they don’t want to, and you can’t make them want to.

So you have to use the best resource you have.

You.

If you need support figuring out where to start contact a coach, counsellor, friend, group, podcast, or a book on the topic or area that you wish to engage in.

Every single one of those things is going to teach you how to be a better resource for yourself. Self regulation, self soothing, self self self. How to get self from one place to another. Goal setting and getting yourself there.

You can witness yourself moving forward and making progress; it takes making the actions to make the progress though.

Witness yourself. Observe yourself. Notice your goals and intentions becoming achieved realities.

Witness yourself from the loving and understanding space that you’ve always needed.

Practice it on yourself first, because you need it most.

Witnessing unconditional love in any form is beautiful, but there is something about experiencing it for yourself, from yourself.

You can be your own witness, start by learning self love. What does it mean to you? Define that and see how your life changes when you meet the definition of self love you created.

All I needed was a witness, so I learned to observe myself creating more unconditional love and be one.

I became the witness to what I was experiencing, and I learned how to differentiate feelings from reactions.

I learned to hold space for what is true for me, and what is true for other people even when things are contradictory. People believe from their own lived experiences, myself included.

I witnessed and celebrated my progressions and failures, I learned to take them as they are and not make them a reason to sabotage progress.

I learned to understand where some of my behaviours are stemming from, to learn why and heal those parts too.

I have become capable of so much more than I ever anticipated by witnessing my emotions and not suffocating them.

If you learn to observe yourself without judgement your healing journey will be a beautiful experience.

You become the witness that you need in the times where you are left alone to battle your own shadows.

After all, you’ve been the only one experiencing your journey all along… you are already the only witness to all of your combined experiences.

Be your own witness, cheer for your own small victories one at a time, and witness them change your life.

All I needed was a witness.

-B. 💋