The Full Spectrum of Trauma

Before Trauma

AfterTrauma

I grew up in a trauma-rich environment. My father was a physically abusive alcoholic. My mother’s boyfriend, Rocky, was a cocaine dealer who wouldn't feed us. Chaos was constant. Love didn’t feel safe, it felt unpredictable. We moved at least eleven times that I can remember. I never really learned how to feel rooted. I didn’t grow up in a home where emotions were processed or named. I just learned to fight. I learned to armor up. And I learned to keep it moving.

From the ages of 1 to 15, I was straight-up She-Hulk. Explosive. Physical. Protective. That was my default. I didn’t know how else to survive. No one told me who I was or how to handle what I felt. So I fought my way through life, trying to create safety with my fists.

From 15 to 31, I tried to survive by becoming the opposite. I hid the Hulk in a box inside my mind. I was hyper-aware, constantly monitoring people’s moods and energy. I stayed quiet. I became a master of anxious attachment, disguised as compassion. I made myself easy to love by never taking up too much space.

Somewhere in that time, between 17 and 24, women I looked up to told me not to talk about my past. “Don’t share your childhood story,” they said. “Keep it private.” That planted a seed. It made me anxious about someone finding out what I came from. It made me feel ashamed that I had no sweet family stories to tell when everyone else was sharing. No holiday traditions. No nostalgic memories to offer. Just a girl who survived too much to share with others.

But in 2018, at 29 years old, I entered yoga teacher training, and it cracked something open in me. Our circle time allowed me to hold space for what I experienced as a child. I started asking, Where do I feel this in my body? And that question changed everything. I started pairing breath with sensation. Started paying attention. That’s when I first realized: Emotions are energy and your past is alive inside your body.

In 2020, I moved to a new country, right after Covid hit the world, and I experienced a sexual trauma that hit me in the center of everything; sexual, physical, emotional. The kind of pain that silences your voice and makes you question your worth.

Even though I had already started learning about emotional frequencies, through books, through energy work, I didn’t fully understand what it meant until I was ripped apart. Let me explain.

Trauma buried itself in my sacral chakra, the energetic core of creativity, sensuality, emotional expression, sexuality, boundaries, and trust. It’s where we connect to pleasure and allow ourselves to receive. When this space is violated, you lose the ability to feel safe inside your own body. You disconnect from joy. You freeze. You flee. You fracture.

The pain lived in the depths of me with scars I could not see.

This makes me cringe to this day.

When I first met this man, he was proud to show me off, and went out of his way to let me know it. He introduced me to everyone in his community with excitement, even people who hadn’t made it back to the island yet had already heard about me through him. He built me into his world like I was a badge of honor. He wanted to be apart of my everyday. He seemed safe, a police officer, a respected leader in the jiu-jitsu community, someone people trusted without question. We shared our sexual fantasies. I had always been curious about threesomes (ffm) and he like to degrade women. (Spitting, slapping, rough sex, gagged and being thrown around) I had never been into that type of sex prior to meeting him, but I believed I was coming into my 30's more sexually open. With myself and others. I believed he cared for me. I saw no red flags. It really wasn't that rough at first.

After a couple of months, he became more argumentative. Distant. My body felt like something was wrong, anxiety was built up inside me. I a retreated away into the night to escape the energy at one point ingulfed in my anxious feeling. But he never asked to stop seeing me, and heard my concerns out. I wrote off my gut feeling. Kept dating him. And said yes, when he asked me over, and to move on from the weirdness.

That led to a date night at his place and him becoming more rough than he had ever been with me sexually. His eyes were darker. I remember laying there looking up at him, questioning to myself, " is he having angry sex with me?" Then, suddenly his hands moves down my leg, and he slammed into me so hard blood immediately started to spill out. I was in shock.

My blood poured onto the floor of his living room, leaving a trail as I tried to make it to the bathroom. I called my sister, she’s a paramedic. I told her what was happening, and she gently urged me to wait and see if the bleeding would slow. She explained that my elevated heart rate from the sex could be making it worse. She told me to breathe. To stay calm. So I did what I could, I locked in on my breath and tried not to panic as held a towel between my legs, and felt the blood gushing out of me.

After a while, he suggested I get into the tub. I sat there, watching the water turn red as my blood clouded around me. I started to feel dizzy. Queasy. My body felt both heavy and extremely light all at once. I told him, “I think it’s time to go to the hospital.”

But he didn’t want to call an ambulance. And now, in hindsight, I understand why. A police officer involved in an incident like this? That would’ve been documented. That would’ve required explanation.

I stood to get out of the tub, and the moment I did, it was like a faucet had opened between my legs. My blood was splashing all over the bathroom floor all around me. Then, I vomited and collapsed right there. Naked and surrounded by blood and vomit. It was one of the lowest moments of my life. I had never seen so much of my own blood. I had never felt so broken, so exposed. My heart pounding with fear, and I only thought about breathing. I don't remember getting dressed or anything about the car ride.

When we finally made it to the hospital, I sat for hours, still bleeding out, waiting for someone to make a decision. He urged me to stop crying. They kept me under observation, uncertain if he should be near me. My body continued to unravel. They tried to open me up to see what was happening. My body trembled uncontrollably in agony. And only after far too much time passed, they finally made the call: I needed emergency surgery and possibly a blood transfusion. I gave the man my sister's phone number, because I genuinely worried I might not make it.

I remember laying down for surgery, and when I woke up it was the next morning and I was being discharged. I was given three pieces of paper about after care. No one told me what it looked like inside me. No one explained needed to be done during surgery that night. None of the paper work given to me had the name of my surgeon. I was extremely exhausted, and still feeling the drugs I had been given. I knew my check up would be two weeks later, no more sex, and how to clean a wound you can not see inside you. I got into his car and drove off with the person I thought cared for me.

After the surgery, the energy had truly shifted. There was a hurricane, no power, so he offered to let me stay with him. I fell in and out of sleep. Every time I woke up he was glued to his phone, so I just kept sleeping until the storm passed.

Then, I got up. Got cute. and went outside to take pictures.

After he took me home, he was still chatting with me the same way. Still trying to see me, but I could feel something was wrong.

I was begging him to see that I was ok. I held his hand as he cried. I had a friend in my ear telling me " what an incredible story you two share now" I was desperately saying anything, including that I liked the kind of sex he wanted. But deep inside, thinking how could I ever let him have sex with me like that again. Trying so hard not to be left alone and broken in complete survival mode in a country far from home.

I begged the man who had degraded and hurt me to just tell me the truth. I asked him if he was already seeing someone else, even though my body already knew. I was asking for confirmation of the truth I could feel in my bones a week ago before the trauma, but couldn’t prove. He continued to deny it. He continued to request to see me. He still invited me to come to jui jitsu classes to observe, because he knew I couldn't do any movements.

Other people spoke up for him. Said he would never do that. Said he wasn’t the kind of man who would spit on me, or pound into my body with force for his pleasure, rip me apart and then move on to the next girl before I was even healed. They said he would never paint me as the villain.

But he did. He witness the naked and most broken version of me, and decided to kick me while I was down.

There were people who knew the truth, or at least enough of it. Some had seen him cheat on me at the gym after classes and said nothing. There were days on the mat I would train next to the same woman he was cheating with, watching her train beside her own boyfriend sometimes, who she was cheating on, too. It was all happening in plain sight, and no one spoke up on or off the mat.

The cheating woman would never roll with me, and never look me in the eye. I naively thought it was her anxiety that caused her to be socially awkward. She was so much younger, and It never crossed my mind. Her Instagram had portrayed her relationship with her boyfriend as cute and fun. But again, hindsight was, she knew some of the truth of what was happening and couldn't bare to look me in the eye. Because silence kept the peace. Because protecting his reputation mattered more than protecting another woman.

I imagine his shame couldn’t bear the reflection of what he’d done to my body and to my trust. So he rewrote the story. He would invite me to jui jitsu classes. Then, tell the guys I was a clinger. He called what happened to me an accident, and never took full accountability for what his desire had created. He recast himself as the good guy in someone else’s version of survival, because the woman he cheated with was also being abused behind closed doors by another police officer.

After all the truth came to light, the woman reached out to me concerned because she had seen "red flags" She also seemed determined to make me believe she needed to be saved. She speaks about me on her Instagram like she trusted me, but honestly I didn't trust any of the story I was hearing. I felt she was pretending to be my friend. I certainly didn't trust her, but I certainly didn’t blame her either. I was in the middle of trauma survival mode realizing my gut was right all along and I ignored it.

She switched up to his side, after her abusive boyfriend manipulated her into thinking I reached out to him to cause drama. I remember thinking, "What a convenient story line for this guy to slip into as hero role, after destroying my body."

Suddenly, I wasn't just surviving a sexual trauma, I was in the middle of a love square filled with deceit and manipulation.

The manipulative abusing boy friend reached out to me to tell me his truth. I shared mine, because quite honestly, I didn't feel like I really knew any body involved at this point. She made it look like on her Instagram, like this guy was fun to be around and loving towards her. I had no idea what he was planning on doing next. He shared my trauma with police.

A few days later, I found myself sitting in the police office in a foreign country. Telling a complete stranger that I had allowed this man to use as much force as he wanted with me during sex for his pleasure. I sat there and said to her, "I gave him permission to do this to me." And that the only reason I'm sitting there telling her this story was because I found out he was cheating on me. I told the woman's boyfriend, who had also been cheated on, what had just happened to me. Then, he decided to report it and they called me in to clear up a man's reputation.

Even as I write about this experience alone, I start to cry, because I had chosen to completely abandoned myself. But I'm also so very proud, that I spoke up and made a report.

This is what women have endured for generations, being harmed, then silenced. Not to protect each other, but to protect the image of the men who hurt them. To sit with shame for what they choose to cause the trauma.

How many stories have come to light recently about how women and men stayed silent about abuse, and how many others suffered because of the silence.

Maybe this guy wasn't all bad. Maybe he was exploring his sexuality fully for the first time with me. Maybe he was so wrapped up in trauma too, that he couldn't care about me. I wont call it an accident any more, but one of the millions of possible outcomes of his and my energies could've created together back then. But I will say if it happen again with another woman after me, it becomes a pattern. So reporting it was one step for me and him to step forward with complete accountability to our choices and the trauma it created.

The woman involved tries to shame me for this action, but I believe it to be one of my top 3 bravest moments in this healing journey. I do not fear ruining a man's reputation by speaking up to what he chose to experience with me. I did not rip myself open with my own force. He should be held accountable for that choice, too.

And when I started to speak, even in days after the trauma. Quietly, honestly, just to friends back home, they got angry. Told me to stop. Urged me to stay silent. And the few who did hear and understand my truth? They became outcasted, too. Shut out for knowing too much. For believing me at all.

But I’m not carrying his shame anymore.

I didn’t know the consent I was so openly giving to him would open doors to blood being spilled, emotional abuse, deceit, public rejection, and my name being twisted to fit someone else’s shame, but my body did.

I hate that my body had to go through that. But looking back, I remember the anxiety. That gut-wrenching feeling I couldn’t explain. My body was already sounding the alarm in the days leading up to the sexual trauma. The tight chest, restless sleep, a sense of dread in my gut I kept brushing off. My body knew. I just wasn’t ready to listen.

Initially after the trauma, I just wanted to avoid it. I tried to bypass the grief with makeup, cute outfits, and this performance of being okay. Each day, I would sit and imagine my body repairing itself, cell by cell. I thought if I looked fine, imagined I was fine, maybe I’d start to feel fine. That didn't work.

My first check up was an outer body experience. I don't remember much. I remember the doctor repeatedly asking me the same question. "Did you consent to this?" I just kept answering yes, sinking in shame and humiliation. She sternly told me she couldn't count the number of stitches she had placed inside me. It was one incredibly long stich. She had never seen a tear that bad not even in rape cases.

I shut down.

I left the doctors office wishing I could crawl into myself. I called the guy to tell him what the doctor said. He got angry about the word rape and didn't want to speak. My boss wouldn't let me have the day off because I was under contract to work. So, I took the bus. Fought the tears. Focused on my breath, again. Then, went back to work like nothing had happened to me.

I wish I could say that was the worst of it. But a few days after my two week check up. My dog, and best friend, for ten years passed away. Something I never saw coming. He just passed away peacefully and randomly in the night. But apart of me believes he felt the pain I was going through without him in Bermuda.

I fell back into old patterns. Hid. Dissociated. I kept it pushing. I poured everything I had into just surviving, trying to move forward like nothing had happened. Then, explode and crash again.

I searched for comfort where I could find it. I clung to those who felt like home, made me laugh, but out of fear of being alone and broken, I made more poor decisions, and got hurt again and again.

I picked up books again, starting with one that had helped me before: Frequency by Penny Peirce. I highly recommend it. In it, she introduces the emotional frequency scale—originally developed by Dr. David R. Hawkins, whose work in Transcending the Levels of Consciousness completely changed the way I understood my internal world. His chart showed me how emotions carry measurable energy, and how each state of being opens or closes access to power, clarity, and healing. And I just kept reading.

I did deep dives into my painful memories. I listened closely for the emotions that stirred. I located them in my body. With my yoga training I practiced deep breaths and guided meditations. I started to move the emotional energy. I didn’t rush it. I didn't force it. I simply played with it. I traveled slowly, moment by moment, up the emotional chart. I began to see the full spectrum of emotions each memory carried, shame, rage, acceptance, compassion, neutrality, and joy.

I went back to movement eventually. About 10 weeks of healing, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t actually want to move. I didn’t feel strong, I felt fragile. I felt exposed. I went through short bursts of being “back on track,” but trauma kept rearing its head and draining my energy.

So movement became practicing grace for what was needed most. 

After trauma, the wires in our nervous system become tangled. There are moments on the healing path where your brain convinces you you're reliving the experience, not because it's happening again, but because your day-to-day thoughts can trigger the exact same reaction chemically. The body floods with sensation. You drown in a wave of panic, completely hijacked by the memory of pain you've already survived. Especially, if their history of emotion and physical traumas in your childhood. And sometimes, you're not even conscious it’s happening. You're just exhausted. Shut down. Numb. Or raging.

So I switched gears. I started with just tapping and breathing. I stopped trying to keep up with the trend of strength in femininity. I let softness lead.

And eventually, I went to therapy in 2023. I realized I could only get so far on my own. I needed someone to help me give the victim and the Hulk a seat at the table, not to banish those heavier sides of myself, but to learn from them. They were never the problem. They were the signal. And through that work, I had the greatest breakthrough of all: I stopped trying to control my emotional energy, and I started playing with it.

I’ve been gifted with a deep sensitivity which helps me tremendously in my career as a physical healer.

However, when my deep heavy emotions stir, it’s a powerful full body experience. If I don’t tend to that energy, it consumes me. If left unchecked, it burns me out. It can drain me for weeks… sometimes months.

That’s when I started to fully understand: Every moment we live in is filled with emotional energy we create and co-create with others. That energy ripples through time and space, weaving into our stories, shaping what comes next. Each emotional frequency opens a different doorway. Discernment and choice are how we steer.

With the help of my therapist, I stopped boxing it up. I stopped labeling emotions as good or bad. I started pouring shame out of me by sharing its energy with ground beneath my feet. I painted with my fears. Using my imagination to create new ways of using those emotions. I explored how to release anger energetically in my movement practice. I stopped pretending certain emotions weren't there, and began honoring them as a part of me that lives fiercely. That protects. That feels deeply. Not something to shut down, but something to partner with.

Therapy, art, play, and imagination slowly brought me back to myself, back to my home frequency. And that shift didn’t just change me. It changed my marriage. As I learned to stop hiding the parts of myself I was taught to be ashamed of, something softened between us. We stopped trying to protect each other from the truth. We started letting it be seen.

Because real partnership isn’t about pretending to be perfect or moving on like nothing happened. It’s about being witnessed, in the rawest, ugliest, most beautiful ways. And when you have someone you can share every awful truth with, it’s terrifying… but it’s also holy. It’s a new level of love. One built on truth. One that grows in the mud, and does not die.

Hearing my doctor describe, in detail, what had actually happened to me in 2020 was incredibly difficult for my husband. He had witnessed me during those early stages of healing, when I was still smiling, still pretending, still insisting I was fine. Back then, I did everything I could to deny just how broken I felt inside. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, let alone to the person I loved. So when he heard it in 2023, clinically, medically, undeniably through the doctors mouth, he was angry. At me. At how much I had hidden away from my own truth. At how badly I had been hurt. He had witnessed my fire and couldn't understand why I didn't use it towards them.

And then, our marriage grew in grace. For each other and for others. We softened into the truth together. We stopped tiptoeing around the pain and started meeting it side by side. There was no longer a need to perfection. No more pretending. Just two humans, learning how to hold what hurts without turning away.

It’s now 2025, nearly five years post-trauma. I’m still learning how to tune into my body with deeper precision and tenderness. But what’s changed is, I trust myself now. I no longer live in fear of my truth or shrink to make others comfortable. I know what “no” feels like in my body, and I honor it. My boundaries are rooted, not rigid. Firm because they’re built from self-respect, not fear. I don’t mistake self-sacrifice for self pride anymore. And I don’t apologize for the choices I had to make to survive. Or for using discernment for what's right and wrong. It’s not judgment, it’s wisdom. And I earned it.

The Flower Moon this month bring ups a quote from favorite author for me:

“When you fear your own power, you hand it away. You give it to someone else to control your life for you.”— Lynn Andrews, Medicine Woman

I’m not doing that anymore, either.

Here’s why I share all of this now:

Incase you haven't realized it yet, I have very little shame anymore.

What you feel about everything is your spirit communicating directly to your physical body. Every emotion you experience (even the ones you are experiencing right now reading my blog) is woven into the tapestry of your future life. You get to steer how it gets used through choice. The only energy that does you no good at all is Shame, but we all have to learn to let it go.

This is they magical key that came from my trauma, that I want to share with women and men.

That's why I'm sharing the full spectrum of my story. All of the emotions I felt along the way were so important to the learning process. If I leave out, the "worst" parts of my story, you can't receive the full message that has come through this experience.

I want to teach little girls to listen to their bodies to prevent trauma and retrauma situations in adulthood.

Because accidents don’t just happen. Choices are made, sometimes small, sometimes subtle, that lead to outcomes that never would’ve occurred otherwise. This kind of pain doesn’t fall out of the sky. It arrives through decisions, our own and others’ we allow into our energy bodies.

I want to teach women about the emotional spectrum, not as a buzzword or spiritual fluff, but as a real compass. A tool. A way back to truth. Through each doorway an important message.

Because when you understand your energy, you understand your power.

You understand your worth.

But most importantly...

I don't want another generation to grow up believing silence and denial are the answer.