During the pandemic I found myself changing in lots of ways emotionally and knew I needed the help of a trusted professional to help me not just process, but figure out healthy ways to address my trauma. I had an incredibly traumatic childhood and while I’ve done therapy for some time, I felt like I was talking about the trauma but not necessarily figuring out what comes after that.
The Grief Recovery program was incredibly insightful for me. The steps were really helpful in listing out the events that impacted so much of my adulthood without me realizing that! The practical sequence of listing the events and then verbally identifying my feelings was really healing for me. I think saying it out loud really helped me to “let it go” in a tangible way. I hadn’t done that before and I hadn’t truly reflected on the forgiveness I needed to give to not just the individuals that impacted my life but myself too. The most traumatic relationship was with my mother who allowed a lot of things to happen and while I thought I’d forgiven her, the truth was I hadn’t and this process really helped me identify that. It’s been so freeing knowing that I can forgive and move on, wish her well but also keep boundaries.
Marla was simply amazing in this process. I really had to trust her with things I’d not told others about and it was very easy for me to do that with her. She kept me on track, was encouraging when I fell off track and challenged me in a way that I was receptive too. It’s a lot of hard work to really dig into trauma and how it impacts your life, and then create a strategy to address it differently going forward. I found a trusted partner in Marla to do that.
Bianca Buckridee