Echoes of Childhood Wounds and the Path to Wholeness

When the echoes of childhood trauma reverberate into adulthood, finding solace can often feel like a lone battle. But what if it didn't have to be? I take you on a deeply personal expedition through the caverns of past pain and the enlightening encounters with the ACE test in our latest episode. It's a dialogue that breaks the chains of silence, inviting you to a collective rite of passage where baring one's soul leads to a shared resurgence of strength.

Venturing into the realm of healing is akin to setting sail on a vast, unpredictable sea. Yet, through our discussions, we chart a course toward understanding and acceptance, emphasizing the beauty of timing in our individual recovery voyages. Whether you find refuge in the sanctity of therapy, the rhythm of pen on paper, or the embrace of heartfelt exchanges, this episode advocates for the sanctity of your narrative. Join me in a chorus of resilience as we lend our voices to the anthem of healing, uniting in the knowledge that every story, including yours, is a cornerstone of our collective edifice of hope.

Instagram: @jacendamarie

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hi, loves, welcome to the Journey to the Soul podcast. I am your host, jacinda Villa, a spiritual life coach and holistic health coach. Every week, we will be diving deep into all things purpose, wellness, spirituality and creating the life that you dream of. This space is meant to be safe and transformative for you to dive into the deepest parts of yourself. We will share what I have learned from my journey along this path years of research and mentors along the way. Having spent many years living life out of alignment and afraid to go after my dreams, I know first hand what it means to take the first step down, living a life authentic to you. We are on this road of self discovery together. It is time for you to live the life you imagined. Hello, loves, welcome to another week here on Journey to the Soul. I hope that your week is off to a beautiful start.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Today I wanted to talk a little bit more about something that I've touched on in a previous episode, and it's really about trauma, and trauma is something that more and more people have been openly discussing, I know in today's day and age, with all the information that's available to us, we're able to learn and just have knowledge so much more accessible to us, which is wonderful, and I also feel like it's greatly due to the time that we're living in that we're able to have spaces that are comfortable enough and conducive enough for people to open up about things that they would otherwise not open up about. So I think our generation has definitely been changing that and breaking those norms in terms of what is and isn't okay to talk about, and trauma is something that so many of us experienced to some degree most of us, really and a lot of the times we were brought up to believe that sharing stuff like this is wrong or we shouldn't impose these things on other people, or no one cares about what I'm going through, whatever our thought or our limiting belief around that is. We all grew up with some aspect of that, and I know that now we are seeing an evolution with how people are starting to open up so vulnerably and just so openly about things that they have experienced, and I feel like this is really a gift for our generation, for the people living on this world now and this is something that we'll dive into more deeply later in the episode, but I really feel like this is how we heal others is through sharing our lived experiences. It's how we feel connected to one another and how we're able to learn and evolve from each other.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So I know so many of us feel shame or unsafe to share about our lived experiences and the reality is that bad things happen in this world and there's no reason to feel that, because the good and the bad, they coexist in our experience being a human here on this earth, and bad things happen all the time here in the world, different parts of the world. You know it's constantly on the news or you hear it from a friend that you know that something happened to someone that they know, or none of us are exempt from experiencing some kind of hardship. I think that is something that we misjudge is that in reality, we are all supposed to experience all the facets of being a human and when our perception of bad things happen, that is just the reality of it and there is no reason to avoid the reality. There's no reason to try to pretend that it doesn't exist or that we haven't experienced something like that, because ultimately, it is a part of you. It's a part of what you've experienced so far in your life and if you're younger and you're listening to this, then it's made probably a big impression in your life so far, or even if you're listening to this in your older. It doesn't matter. These kinds of experiences are. Whatever kind of trauma that we experience, they leave an imprint on our life. Whether it's a big T trauma or a little T trauma, as they say in psychology, we all experience some kind of trauma, even with parents or caretakers. With the best intentions, something always comes through for us and that is not right or wrong, it just is. So it doesn't matter if it is a big T trauma or a little T trauma. These experiences for you, they make a huge impression on your well-being, how you go about living your life, what you believe to be true on so many things and a lot of the times we don't even recognize that, we're not conscious about that, but they have an incredible impact to our well-being.

Speaker 1: 6:27

And a few years ago I took the ACE test. That's the adverse childhood experience test, and before taking this test I always knew that my childhood was not typical and I know I've shared in previous episodes a little bit about that and I'll continue to open up on some of those things as time goes on, but in my mind it never seemed that bad. I never thought that my childhood was that out of the norm. I always thought, you know, there's people that probably go through worse than this and I was just so used to it. It was what I knew. I had grown comfortable with that. I knew how to deal with it. So when I took this test I was already working through some of this trauma. I was already aware of it. I had began to see how it had webbed its way into my life in so many forms and the impressions that it had really made in my life from such a very young age. So I had that perspective already going into this and I began to see that it wasn't normal what I had experienced.

Speaker 1: 8:01

So when I took the ACE test and rated very high, the first thing that I felt was shame around all of those things I experienced. Just shame, so amplified, and it echoed in me the desire that I already had, but it echoed in me more deeply to not want to share or talk about these parts of my life with the world. And where I was in that moment is very different than where I am now and what I knew and understood about myself and my journey then. But I felt like it was simply telling me again that these are bad things. You know, these are things that we shouldn't discuss or we shouldn't open up about. They're taboo things being able to talk about these things. So here was this test telling me I think I got like 9 out of 10 on it and here was this test telling me that I had experienced.

Speaker 1: 9:12

It was confirming to me that I had experienced a lot of trauma in my life and most of my life I never spoke to anyone about what was actually going on in my life. I've always been a very private person, always kept to myself. People didn't really know what was going on because I never chose to open up. That was a decision that I made for myself and I had a lot of beliefs around that. I didn't want anyone to feel bad for me. I felt shame that this was my experience, that this is what I had lived, and I didn't want anyone to worry about me. I wanted to figure it out on my own. I wanted to come out of this on the other side.

Speaker 1: 10:01

So I hid this aspect of my life for a very long time, for most of my life, and it came to me more recently that there is no shame in sharing these parts of ourselves If we feel it in our hearts too. If we are doing it to try and get love and attention from others, then that is not with the best intentions. But if we share with the hopes that it can help those around us, there is a way for us to share even these very heavy and taboo aspects of our life that many people don't feel comfortable talking about, and this is how we change things. This is how we're able to help those around us. This is how we heal as well, by continuously moving through these things that we experienced. When we share and have a conversation with someone, we are being vulnerable and living through that experience by going back and sharing our memories of that, and that allows us to heal. It allows us to voice it out to the world. It becomes real, it's out in the world, it's not just something in our mind, and this helps us move through these things.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Ultimately, you experience this for a reason as well, and it's part of what you are meant to share in the world. We need to love and honor all of these aspects of ourselves, even the parts of ourselves that feel hard to love, that the chapters of our life that we don't like looking back at, that we never want to see, that we put in a filing cabinet and never open Like these are the parts of ourselves that we're supposed to learn how to love most deeply, because this is where our greatest you know healing comes from, and we need to take ownership and see that we did experience this for a reason. And how do we use this experience to help those around us? And it starts with us being able to fully honor and accept it, to be able to share this part of us with the world, since it made us who we are. Of course, we also need to be at peace with our past in order to share it. So if you feel like you have some work to do in this area and don't feel comfortable for that reason, then that is completely fine.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Being at peace is a most important thing, and working through trauma, working through these experiences, takes years. Sometimes it can take so long, but never rush it if you don't feel like you are ready to move through it. This is something that you need to be ready to open yourself up to, because you don't know what you're going to find. You don't know what's going to come out, and you can start seeing a therapist for this. You can start just working through it by yourself. You know, writing about it, talking with a friend about it with family. It doesn't matter how you do it, but you need to be ready to embark on that journey within yourself, because it's going to be a journey. Working through these things takes time and so much love and understanding and compassion for yourself. So if you don't feel ready to talk to anyone about these things, that is completely okay. Don't rush yourself and just allow yourself to be and process it in your own way, within yourself. And whenever you are ready, you will know you will feel it, you'll want to work through it. You know you'll want to find someone that can help you process it even more.

Speaker 1: 14:26

In sharing this with you today, I hope that you find the courage to share your experiences with whoever in your life you feel it may help, even in the smallest way. This is true bravery being able to open up and share the deepest parts of you in hopes that it will guide others, being able to speak openly and honestly about these parts of ourselves. Imagine how that person will feel, knowing that they're not walking that journey alone. Imagine how that person will feel and they will continue to keep persevering. They will resonate with what they heard. They will resonate with you and what you shared. It will open them up a little bit more to that. So just know that these things happen divinely for us because it is something that we are meant to experience and overcome in our life. It is part of our gift to the world. This is something that we are meant to share on our own time, though. We are rushing it on our own time because only when we have healed are we able to truly share this with lightheartedness. So if we try to rush it and do it before, then it can cause us more hurt than anything else, even with the best intentions. So we shouldn't rush our process to work through these things.

Speaker 1: 16:23

In opening up as well, you will show people the gift of vulnerability, and this is how we help each other connect to our heart more and more. This is how we create the space for these more sensitive topics to be discussed. We have to create a safe and open space for people to be able to share and air out all of these things that they have held in to themselves for so long, know that your experiences are a gift to this world and that by sharing and opening up about these things that can be so taboo to talk about Cause so many people feel like who wants to listen to this pity party or me talking about all of these quote bad things but it's really the energy in which we share them that changes everything, the energy in which we choose to share these things, because if you open up with someone and you choose to share this experience that you went through with levity, that will show, they will feel that and that alone will make even a bigger impact into how they process it, because they can see, they can feel that you have made peace with what you are sharing with them, that deep experience, even if it is not the nicest thing to want to open up about. But it's in the energy in which we share, it's our intention, so there is no reason to feel shame about these things. I hope that in hearing this, even if you're not ready to open up with anyone about something that you may have experienced, that at least you know in your heart that these experiences are for your greatest evolution and they're part of how you're meant to connect with the world and if you do feel like you're ready to move through someone. Finding someone who can be a part of your life, can be by your side and with you, helping you is going to make the journey of healing so much easier and bearable and not alone, you know Cause it can feel like a very long journey and a long road sometimes, but having someone who's there to help you pull through and continue moving through whatever comes up the good and the bad is going to be so amazing for you to continue to move through the trauma.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Move through whatever little tea or big tea you experience, but there is no shame in it. It's simply something that we experience, but there's no reason to feel shame about opening up and talking about these things. Own your story, my love. Own what you went through. Own what you're still going through. This is all meant to be for your evolution. I will talk to you all in my next episode. I'm sending you so, so much love and light. I'll see you then. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this message with any friends and family. I'd love to hear your takeaways, so share them with me by leaving a comment below or heading over to my Instagram at jessendamory. I am sending you all so much love.