Coming Home…

We’ve all heard the term ‘Home is where the Heart is’ but what does that actually mean? After all, it can mean any number of things really.

For me personally, ‘Home’ means feeling safe – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. A place where I can give my parasympathetic system a chance to reboot, somewhere that my over-developed Flight/Fight/Freeze response can take a breather, in order for me to be able to rest and get a little repose in.

For those who struggle with feeling safe, I want to encourage you to take an inventory of your life, be as fearless and thorough as possible.

What are you afraid of? What are you hiding from? Do you struggle with feeling as if you don’t belong? Are you afraid to be yourself? Do you feel as if you don’t belong where you are? Do you feel that if you are truly your authentic self you’ll be punished or harmed?

Perhaps you grow up in or lived in an environment where you were unsafe, unstable, or unfulfilling which leads you to believe that that is all you deserve in life.

That’s not true by the way you deserve to be safe, stable and fulfilled.

To experience true safety and stability we all need to begin with ourselves. We need to face our demons and what we’ve been running from or trying to hide from, in order to be free.

We are not our past, we are not our trauma or past abuse.

It’s so easy to get caught up in believing that if we aren’t our past, our trauma or abuse then who and what are we?

I know, I was caught in that lie for most of my life.

The day that I was able to disconnect my history of trauma and abuse from the story of who I am was profound. To be honest I felt completely lost. If I wasn’t for my trauma and abuse, then who was I?

You see I was carrying around the guilt and shame that belonged to my abusers. I truly believed that I was responsible for all the horrible things that had happened to me. All the physical abuse, all the emotional and psychological torment and even being sexually abused as a 6-year child.

To be crystal clear NONE of the was my fault or responsibility.

Yet I carried around all that guilt and shame that was never mine to carry.

It wasn’t until I was able to feel safe enough to address my years of profound abuse and trauma that I was able to break free from the lies I’d lived with for decades.

I was put in therapy for the first time when I was 13 and from that time continued to seek help from mental health professionals and other types of healers. All the different work I did help to some degree which I’m grateful for, however, I always seemed to end up in a very dark place.

It wasn’t until I began working towards a certification in Gestalt Psychology in which we partnered with horses, that I was able to heal at a cellular level. As part of the certification process, we were required to do our own personal healing work.

I’ll be honest it was scary, and it was painful. It was also TOTALLY worth facing my fear and working through the pain to permanently release the abuse and trauma from my body at a cellular level.

An unexpected by-product of doing my personal healing work partnering with horses was that there were no longer emotional ‘hooks’ to trigger a trauma response.

This was the beginning of finding my way ‘Home’.

Over the past decade partnering with horses, I’ve successfully worked with clients helping them to release their past pain from their bodies on a cellular level. I also teach them various techniques and tools to use to help them continue to be successful and move forward on their healing journey.

We cannot truly feel at Home anywhere or with anyone if we are always waiting for ‘the other shoe to drop’. Very basic trauma response is preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.

When we know deep down to the core of our Being that we are safe and can handle whatever life throws at us then we are truly Home whoever we’re with or wherever we happen to be. This knowledge comes with the price of looking our fears in the eye and facing whatever we’ve been trying to hide from. Once we do those fears will never again have the power to impact our day-to-day lives in the form of self-sabotage, unhealthy relationships, or harmful behaviors.

You deserve to find a haven, a place of safety, to call home and the place to begin is within yourself.

*Originally published at Thrive Global https://thriveglobal.com/stories/coming-home-3/