Interview with Amie Johnson: Trauma survivor and a host of The HeART of Healing podcast
I “met” with Amie via Instagram and instantly felt we have much in common. She’s recently come out of years of dealing with trauma symptoms and mental health (mis)diagnoses and is moving on in her healing journey. I always appreciate her heartfelt and honest posts, and find much wisdom in her words and story. Here are Amie’s own words: Tell us a little bit about your life journey. This question always gets me! I’ll give you the “nutshell version.” I was born and raised in a small, beach town in West Michigan. My childhood was a strange dichotomy of idyllic and awful. I had an emotionally and physically abusive dad, and…
How childhood trauma robs your power away and how to take it back
This summer I spent about a month at my father’s house with my son. It wasn’t our first time and, as I’d expected, it was tumultuous. A part of me knew it was time to stand up to some of the dysfunction in my family of origin and confront it. I could only hope that this experience was going to bring me some resolutions and it would prove empowering. And it did. For the first week or so the usual, generations-old, themes of guilt and shame, insecurity and inadequacy were saturating the air until it came to a boil. There were tears and screaming, anger and pain – suppressed emotions and…
How trauma and codependency in childhood can cause toxic mommy guilt
I often question why I feel so much guilt as a mother towards my little boy. It’s not only crippling my own experience of being a mother but also sending inaccurate messages to my son which shape the way he views himself and the world. I feel stricken with guilt every time I feel the effects of my trauma. I blame myself for not being able to shake off the sadness or depression I feel, for the anger that sometimes I can’t hold or the negativity that my critical mind is keeping me a captive to. I feel shame every time I’m not at my best for letting my son down. When…
The shame around being a “bad mother”
Sometimes I resent being a mother. That is not to say that I don’t love my child. Unlike my mother and some mothers who can’t love, I do love my son. With all my heart and soul, always and forever. I believe all mothers have moments when they resent motherhood. I believe that the contemporary expectation to be a non-stop happy and vibrant mother is not only unrealistic, it’s also severely shaming and stigmatising. It makes natural temporary feelings of dissatisfaction or unfulfillment fester into gnawing guilt. That makes me think how terribly unprepared and largely delusional so many mothers enter into motherhood, including me. I wanted my child with…
On grief: the missing relationship with the mother
If you ask me how my life has been the last couple of years, I probably wouldn’t say it has been full of grief. It would be one of the first things to cross my mind but I wouldn’t say it. I would probably divert to being a mom and looking after a household, which is true but it’s only half of my world. The grief and everything it brings – I’ve put aside in the back pocket of my mind. It wasn’t until I started listening to the audiobook Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, that I felt how much grief I still carry in me.…
Becoming our true selves
I had a revelation – I had put my life on pause. About 3 years ago I unconsciously put my own life on hold. What happened at that time is that I moved in with my partner and we had a baby. Life drastically changed as I moved out of my flat in Dublin city and moved in a quieter area nearby; I said goodbye to single life living with my best friend and embraced sharing a relationship and a 3 bedroom house with my boyfriend. I also lost my job and not long after that we got pregnant. It was a life overhaul. I switched identities over a few months. Consciously…
