It was 1998, and I was 37 years old, when I attended a two-week advanced hypnosis class with some friends. Yes, hypnosis is real. No, not everyone can be hypnotized – you must be able to focus for the time it takes to go under. Hypnosis cannot make you do anything that is against your moral, ethical, or personal beliefs. In other words, if you would bark like a dog under hypnosis, you will likely do so during your everyday life without prompting. Anyway, we were practicing parts therapy that is used to identify a part of the body that may have been impacted by trauma and the cause of the trauma. Once under, I was asked to identify the body part impacted by trauma and I identified the heart. When asked what the trauma was, I identified the murder of my sister Karen. I was 11 when Karen was murdered -she was 21. Doing the math, I lived in trauma for 26 years without knowing it. Though it wasn’t like there wasn’t any signs, I was just incapable of recognizing the signs. Anyway, once I became aware of the trauma, I knew that it was time to grieve the loss and heal. I turned to journaling to solidify my feelings, fully grieve the loss, and release the pain. This did not mean that I would forget my sister. On the contrary, I miss Karen every day, and there are times that I still feel cheated that she was taken so soon. I’m just no longer traumatized by the loss and am now capable of giving and receiving love – no longer afraid of being hurt.
Between 1998 and 2025, I would experience six more traumas (some multiple times) that journaling would again help me to fully process my grief to heal. Along the way, I would learn things about myself, what we are, and why we are here. So yes, there is spirit written all over these pages. In the end, my personal journal would become An Anthology of Loss, Healing, and Resilience.
With processing each loss, I found that it made me a stronger, and more capable of coping with the next trauma that would eventually come my way, making me increasingly resilient. Trust me, I never expected six more traumas, but each one happened for a reason. When I gave an early draft of my book to a friend to read, the first thing she told me was, “You have been through some stuff.” Yes I have and I’m still here!
My hope is that by sharing my most painful stories, I might show that healing is possible and that we are all capable of becoming more resilient when we face our pain, give ourselves permission to grieve it, and then let it go - to God, the Universe, the earth, or just into the atmosphere. Just don’t hold on to it. It is time. I also believe that no one is alone in their pain – all of us who have faced trauma and loss are in a way bonded to each other, even though our pain and trauma is very personal to each of us.
Join me again as I share the make-up of An Anthology and information about each chapter/trauma!