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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…
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How my recent job rejection helped me heal and love myself
Last Monday I applied for a job position as a writer. It’s been many years since I worked as an employee and I’ve experienced a fair bit of disappointments on the professional front. But I thought all this was behind me now and since the opportunity was ticking my boxes and I met the requirements, I went for it with my best intentions. The hiring company was the online publication Bright Side and they wanted me to pass a test. After a couple of days of communicating with the HR, a broken link, and a slight delay, I got to the challenge. I didn’t pass it. But let me start from…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Why holding space is so important in relationships
You may have heard the term “to hold space” for somebody. Did you fully understand what it means? How we actually do that and why is it so important? I remember reading about it a while ago but couldn’t quite connect the dots – it just sounded abstract or something. And I’ve been seeing articles and videos on the subject circulating around social media, but it wasn’t until I had my own realisations about what relationships really are, that I fully embodied the understanding of what this term means. As I wrote in my previous post, relationships are tools that are assigned from God to us, and signed in a…
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How relationships help us heal and transform
Will you define your relationships with people as good? Or do you think you can do better? Have you ever wondered why are relationships so tricky? I recently watched a talk which shed some very needed light on this question. Relationships are a tool, with a big T. They are an instrument. They are a mirror. They are an opportunity for us to heal our wounds. Furthermore, they are the only way for us to continue growing and evolving, as human beings and as souls. When we choose to enter a relationship in the material plane, on a soul level we have already signed a contract with this particular soul to experience some learning and growth. Our mutual purpose is…
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Dreams of freedom and defining values
What is freedom for you? Can you answer with one word, perhaps you need one sentence? And what do you dream of? Do you need more than a sentence to describe your dream? I understand – we often don’t know what we’re dreaming of or perhaps, all the more, we’re not daring into thinking what our dream really is. And sometimes it takes quite a long time to realise it… I’m one of the people who until now didn’t understand what they really long for. I knew I was longing for something, something else than what I was experiencing. But I think I may have been too scared to question myself –…
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Motherhood and enjoying the present moment
Taking the first steps
To my dear child
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Birthday wishes and full moon magic
This last Sunday was my birthday – happy 32 years to me! Birthdays are always tricky – the solar return of our lives – they mark an ending and a beginning. Since my birthday is in autumn I find it even more melancholic – the end of the summer season and the beginning of the “back to school” season. The two together have always been challenging for me. But now that I’m at an age when there’s no school classes it feels more like reckoning with what I’ve achieved in my personal development and life. So it’s a time of looking back and evaluating and looking ahead and setting intentions. For what I know…
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September astrology vibes and dives
Once the month of September arrives I’m all into diving deep in astrology. Last year around that time started my astro-journey. I opened the first of many books that I read in the consequent months. My curiosity and amazement of this subject has deepened every day since then. These days I’m reading about my six-year long perspectives and also one year planetary transits. And I’m fascinated. But not only with the accuracy of these reports. The modern astrology doesn’t just give us facts and dates of things that will happen. No, this isn’t really the meaning of astrology. Today astrologers look into the overall themes in our lives based on…
