MY STORY

If I was a pilot, every warning light in the cockpit was flashing simultaneously and my plane was going down.

I had two gorgeous kids in a marriage escorting itself to a life raft, and the world was in another a recession— which combined with my age in Hollywood indicated my love affair with my work, and my life-line to independence, might be over as I knew it.

After a near fatal scuba-diving experience around my fortieth birthday, years of undigested trauma was bubbling to the surface. I was diagnosed with ADHD, had autoimmune symptoms, sleep dysfunction, panic attacks, migraines, and anaphylaxis to mystery allergies. Divorce, while not usually a frolic in the park, was made almost insurmountable or survivable while simultaneously navigating a home invasion, stalking and loss of income and life savings. I was fragmented, highly dysregulated, extremely low functioning, isolated and desperate to heal. My compounding traumas made it seem unfathomable that help would ever come, and I could barely use my voice to ask for it.

Finally, diagnosed by my lovely psychiatrist as being gaslit by two previous traditional talk therapists, several subsequent fateful encounters changed my life.

A mum from my kids’ school passed me in the corridor one day and without any context said,” My intuition tells me you should attend this workshop Gina Ross is doing about people in media.” I could barely afford to. I went. I had no idea the training was to educate members of the media on the impact of trauma on the collective, and our responsibility to support healthy regulation. Gina invited the attendees to participate in a few demonstrations. She wanted to know if anyone was having trouble sleeping. My hand shot up. She chose me. And in twenty minutes I felt different ( and later that night when sleep beckoned —yet of late, had often failed— I had my first full night of sleep in months). Who was this Witch? What was this Sorcery?

The next day I went for a steep hike with a dear friend. We came across a stranger, his head bowed, sitting on a cliff edge in complete freeze. As I walked by him though, he lifted his head, looked me dead in the eye and quietly implored me with a gentle, “Hi…”

I smiled, said hi, yet walked on.

“I know you can help him,” my friend whispered. He knew I was training to be a facilitator and might possibly have some tricks up my sleeve.

I wasn’t convinced I had anything different to offer from all the other well- meaning onlookers who had apparently been trying for two hours already, and not succeeded.

“So let’s stand back and wait and watch for a bit,” he suggested.

Taking in the scene from a distance I noticed that the person who’d been hiking with the man in distress was now starting to raise his voice and gesticulate with his arms in a very frustrated, perhaps angry manner. I realized no-one and nothing else was working, and things were escalating so I asked a muscular hiker on his way down the mountain to help us.

We all walked back down to the man frozen on the cliff.

“I think I can help you, may I sit?”

He nodded, then said, “I am scared.”

“This IS scary,” I acknowledged.

He sighed a deep sigh. Something was shifting. And then intuitively I asked him to do me a favor, if he felt he could; to focus on his hands and feet, and see if he could move them, even a little. He could, and did. Not so focused now on the overwhelm, he started to breathe more and his muscles relaxed a little.

I then used a couple of the tips Gina had taught us a day before from her Emotion Aid tool. And the man’s state shifted rapidly. Wanting to sew seeds toward what might be a possible next step for he and this mountain, I said, “You know, at some point, I know you’re going to feel ready to be able to stand up on your own strong legs, put your hands on the shoulders of this kind, strong man who is here to help you, and I know you will walk down the mountain when you feel good and ready to do so.”

The minute I said it, he did it. After only five minutes of me supporting him, off he went. Never turning back. I don’t know his name. I forgot to ask. And that exchange changed my life.

The next day I returned to Gina’s workshop determined to learn everything I could about this method and her tools.

Gina put me on scholarship to train as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and I am now determined to help as many people help themselves as possible. I absolutely love to be useful in a crisis; a bridge or guide to someplace better. And I love to help people reach their full potential. These two passions inform the basic structure of my coaching practice.