was the classic good wife of the 1950s, one who was subservient to her husband. My father, a Baptist minister, was a kind man and a deep thinker, an excellent speaker, and much loved by his congregation.
I modeled myself after my father, the parent who held all the power. I did not want to be like my mother. In the process, I didn’t realize I was moving away from my authentic self, bit by bit.
At the age of six, I remember getting the tip of my right pinkie finger crushed by the chain on our backyard swing set. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I ran into the house, blood streaming from what remained of the end of my finger.
My father quickly cleaned and dressed the wound, gently and carefully wrapping it in gauze and taping it. Then he quietly let me know that I needed to stop crying — just like that!
I so aspired to be the person my dad wanted me to be. My finger hurt like hell, but I knew that if I wanted to please him, I needed to put a lid on my pain and stop crying. So I did.
Given all this, I’m not surprised to look back now and see that, by the time I was a teenager, I lived behind invisible walls, firmly shielded from whatever I thought could possibly hurt me.
I rarely cried, only doing so when I was alone. I saw myself as the “Rock of Gibraltar,” a place of safety and strength for everyone who needed me. People loved me for my responsible caregiving, while within I felt numb and confused. The tenderness in my own heart did not get seen, much less touched. I was constantly trying to please everyone.
Mine is not an uncommon story. My traumas were not large, relatively speaking. Some might not consider them traumas at all. I certainly have been witness to friends and clients in my therapeutic practice and classes who have experienced far worse.
Yet trauma is a subjective experience. We should not judge our own traumas as being large or small by comparing them with anyone else’s experience — not even doctors can know the personal impact of an individual’s experiences and how they may be stored in their system.
As I travel and teach internationally, I ask my students if they consider their empathy and sensitivity to life to be an asset. Very few hands go up. Most of us consider our empathic abilities a liability, not an asset. Few realize that this internal capacity to feel life is what makes us fully human and allows us to function to our full potential. What I mean by healthy empathy is the capacity to sense our body, our emotions, and to walk in someone else’s shoes without taking on their issues as our own.
Ironically, despite caring about others and our empathetic responses, when we create excessive protective barriers between the world and ourselves, we unknowingly undermine ourselves. We don’t realize that these barriers may sometimes shield us from life’s pain, but they also cut us off from the juiciness of life, from our creativity and joy, and from the knowing that helps us take care of ourselves.
One hot, humid summer night when I was seventeen, I got a pivotal wake-up call that fundamentally changed the direction of my life. That evening was a typical Virginia summer night. The air felt thick and heavy. I was at a neighborhood pool party. My friend John asked if we could go somewhere and talk. I thought the request was a bit odd, but I figured he needed some sisterly advice.
John was a longtime friend, a sweet teddy bear of a guy. Unbeknownst to me, he was spinning out of control in that moment and coming down from a long stretch on amphetamines. I was clueless about the underground drug culture that was widespread around me.
We sat in the front seat of his car in the parking lot outside the pool and were having a normal teenage conversation, just “hanging out.” As we talked, I began to feel a strange but distinct uneasiness in my gut. This was not in response to the tone of his voice or the topic of conversation, yet the uneasiness continued for well over half an hour.
My thoughts were telling me it was unreasonable to feel uncomfortable with my friend, so I ignored my gut feelings. After all, he was like an older brother to me, and I dismissed my discomfort as foolish and didn’t say anything about it.
Then, I turned away from him for a moment to look out the window, and the next thing I knew his hands were around my throat. He was strangling me. He was so strong I quickly and completely passed out.
When I regained consciousness, I was trembling all over. My head was pressed against the car door. John was plastered to the other side of the front seat, behind the steering wheel, obviously shocked and horrified at what he had done. He was apologizing profusely. I, too, was in serious shock.
Every cell in my body screamed at me to get out of the car now. This time, I listened. My primal survival instinct overruled my sweet seventeen-year-old politeness. As the strength in the lower half of my body surged back, I managed to open the door, and I crawled, shaking like a leaf, across the parking lot to my boyfriend’s car, where help was waiting.
My heart felt shattered. Afterward, I soon learned why my friend had been so violent that night; he had been on drugs and was basically melting down inside. But my mental, left-brained knowing could not fix the damage. It took years of bodywork and emotional healing to melt the internal scars of fear and betrayal from that event.
In the moment, had I recognized and appreciated my gut intelligence and honored the message it was giving me, I could have avoided this life-changing trauma.
By saying this, I am not implying that what happened was my fault! This is a common response among trauma survivors, as I know from my decades of study and work with this population. Survivors may blame themselves, especially when the perpetrator is someone they know. In the immediate aftermath of my encounter, I did the same thing, wondering what it was about me that had caused this to happen.
Yet the blame was not mine, and I want to be clear that victims are not to blame for their traumas. Life happens, and even in the best of situations, we are never fully in control.
On the other hand, I also learned something valuable that forms the core of what I want to share with you in this book. This lesson can help you make the best decisions possible, regardless of external conditions and circumstances.
As I healed emotionally and physically from my traumatic experience, I became fascinated with the realization that my gut had known that something was off about sitting in that car with my friend!
Afterward, I promised myself that I would never second-guess my gut knowing again, even if the reasons for that knowing were not readily apparent on any other level.
That experience opened my eyes, and I realized that I had failed to listen to my own alarm system. My learned habits, automatic responses, and limiting beliefs had kept me from listening to and acting on my body’s wisdom.
This life-threatening trauma jolted me awake and brought me to my process of self-healing. The journey home to the wisdom of my body is my life’s work, and it is this process I share with you in this book. Not only did it enable me to heal fully, but it also has guided me in ways that helped me avoid other potentially traumatizing situations.
I hope that as more people awaken to the wisdom that lies within, fewer will experience the kind of trauma I did.
The Most Important Relationship in Your Life
Your relationships with other people throughout your lifetime — with your parents, spouses, children, friends, and teachers — will shift as time passes and situations change. As long as you are alive, however, your body is always with you.
It is so beneficial to have a strong, deep, intimate relationship with your own unique physical self.
Your body is designed to guide you, keep you safe, and bring you full vitality and pleasure. It is the vehicle through which you create and manifest your thoughts and dreams into reality.
In this book, you will discover how establishing and nurturing a healthy relationship with your body will allow you to reclaim lost parts of yourself, tap into your body’s wisdom, and better navigate your life.
Let’s begin by exploring your current relationship with your body, first by discovering