Author: Rosa M Luna

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Healing Trauma with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

This is another discovery that I had forgotten about until I ran into a friend with whom I used to work at a mental health clinic. I asked him about how work was going and then I remembered he had taken this process course for his work as a Mental Health Professional (MHP).

He said he took some time off to finish getting his certification.  I asked if this process really worked. YES! And it takes less time to heal. It takes maybe 3 to 6 months, depending on the client, he may be healed in 12 to 26 sessions.

This may take a lot less time, instead of years. The Client needs to be ready to do what is asked of him or her. Easy and almost painless.

I was chosen to be part of this mental health team and partner up with my friend. This was before we became friends. This was how I met my new friend.

As a team, we were assigned to work with a client who had lost her partner to cancer. A very educated lady, who had taken her sick leave and all her vacation to be with her partner, but later had to leave her position to support her partner until the partner’s death. ]

This devastated Mary, our client.

As trauma does, it leaves you in shambles and it changes the cells and nervous system, affects the brain cells, and basically the body as a whole.

My friend and all those involved with her treatment plan, including our client, Mary, started the process of healing her. Utilizing EMDR treatment.

The reprocessing involves “reflecting on specific experiences of past trauma in your life. It is a form of therapy that helps people like Mary to heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences, during her lifetime.

These are the experiences causing you the most stress, grief, or other emotional reaction. This formal process takes time and requires the services of a trained therapist, and certified specifically for the EMDR therapy program treatment.  Most people gain remarkable, life-changing success in 12 to 20 sessions.

Mary was mainly interested in finding a job to pay some of her basic bills, which started to pile up. This was causing her more non-relieving stress. Mary wanted a job.

It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. However, EMDR therapy, shows that the mind can in fact be healed from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. We used the EMDR to re-wire the healing process to give Mary the focus needed for a job.

Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference.

EMDR therapy helps children and adults of all ages. My friend said, the therapists use EMDR with a wide range of challenges, including, but not limited to, sexual assault, pain, panic attacks, violence, abuse and anxiety, and PTSD.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories (Shapiro, 1989a, 1989b). Shapiro’s (2001) Adaptive Information Processing model, EMDR therapy facilitates the accessing and processing of traumatic memories and other adverse life experiences to bring these to an adaptive resolution.

After successful treatment with EMDR therapy, affective distress is relieved. Negative beliefs are reformulated, and physiological arousal is reduced.

This is so amazing for the sufferer. Mary started showing some positive results. Her treatment plan would have to be changed, as some of her skills started coming back to her.

During EMDR therapy Mary paid attention to emotionally disturbing material in brief sequential doses while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. For example, talking to people about her working skills. Mary was good in using computer technology and knowledge of her feelings, to express herself upon reporting using technics learned, texting, and/or e-mailing her feelings and experiences of some of the positive results that she had received by EMDR therapy.

Her therapist (my friend), directed lateral eye movements in the most commonly used external stimulus, and a variety of other stimuli including hand-tapping and audio stimulation are often used.

Our team and our EMDR therapist met to facilitate and access the traumatic memory network, so that information processing is enhanced, with new associations forged between the traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. This was to check if Mary would be able to safely excess her information.

These new associations are thought to result in complete information processing, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights.

EMDR therapy uses a three-pronged protocol: (1) the past events that have laid the groundwork for dysfunction are processed, forging new associative links with adaptive information.

(2) the current circumstances that elicit distress are targeted, and internal and external triggers are desensitized. This part of the process was successful with Mary with some assistance of some help from our other teams.

(3) imaginal templates of future events are incorporated, to assist our client in acquiring the skills needed for adaptive functioning. Mary was required to make reports, and send us information on her feelings, and some other parts of the process by using tools our therapist suggested, without speaking in detail or doing homework used with other therapies.

Which, as I understand it, EMDR has been so well researched, that it is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma.

In the Practice Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, and those of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Dr. Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, Executive Director of the EMDR Institute in Watsonville, CA, and founder and President Emeritus of the non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and low fee training worldwide.

We are so fortunate, to have these healers in our midst. You may find some of these EMDR therapists in most of the local Mental Health, or Behavioral Health clinical facilities.

We could use this discovery by Francine Shapiro Ph.D. I understand it has been around since 1988.

For more information, visit: https://www.emdr.com/

I hope this is helpful, information. Many Blessings to all.

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Grief Over Loss of a Loved One is Traumatizing

I am writing about death, grieving, it is like another blow to the heart. Haven’t we suffered enough? Grief hurts just as bad, if not more. I just got the news that one of my older sisters died. During this time of the pandemic. the funeral had to be limited. So out of respect for my other family, I did not attend the funeral services.

My sister’s immediate family did not want videos taken, so we could not see them.  No one disrespected their wishes. One of my nieces was unable to come to her mom’s funeral. This is the fourth sister I have lost. Out of 14 of us, only nine of my siblings remain. It sounds like a lot of families still left, but not when you’re missing a few.

I miss my sisters so much; it is hard to put feelings into words. I understand crying is OK. Missing them is OK. My spiritual beliefs help me to understand the why?

They are in a better world, no pain. What you or I believe in, could be a wonderful resource for grief recovery or if you are religious and believe in hell!

Or purgatory, a place to dwell until judgment day. Then how am I supposed to deal with that? I will have to pray her out of there, what am I supposed to do? Or is believing in my past church teachings, like a barrier for us to heal.

Life is Death

I was told that death is part of the life cycle. Why? It hurts so damn much. Is it like the menstrual cycle? You can’t stop it unless you’re giving life to a child. How ironic, isn’t it? No control…

What Can You Say?

Some friends will also pull back and some of my other family, will not talk to me because they really do not know what to say.  They speak my sister’s name and I break down.  You feel abandoned.

The thing you can say is, “I am sorry for your loss,” and back away. And for god’s sake, don’t say, “I know what you are going through.” This is not the time when the heart wound is open and bleeding.

To hurt is part of being a real and alive human being. They say one of the ways to heal from grief is to talk about the person. My sister and I were close. We were closer in age. My sister was the prettiest one of all of us, eight girls. She was my mom’s favorite. When my sister would visit my mother just after we were all married, my sister would come to visit and clean her house and would be doing the chores for her.

When I would come to visit, my sister had already cleaned the house, so I would be spending quality time with my mom. We spent time talking. I loved that and I miss her, so much. My mom died when she was 52 years old. She died too young.

What Can You Do?

The following was what I was told to do after the death of my loved one;

  • Take care of yourself. Make sure that my physical health is good.
  • Keep doing what is routine in my life, go to bed at my regular time. Even if I don’t feel sleepy. Do not drink alcohol or do drugs, they are not the answer.
  • Instead, I should meditate, do yoga, pray for my sister to be happy for her, no matter where she may be.
  • It’s OK to cry, crying will heal me as long as I express myself emotionally.
  • Talk about my sister, to those who know how it feels to lose a loved one.
  • For me to make time for myself. If I needed to be alone, find time to do so.

Well, my friends thank you for allowing me to mourn my sister and my mother. It helps to have someone to talk to and cry with. I pray that when it happens to you, God will give you the courage and the right answers. I was also told that death is a universal experience, it happens to all of us.

Many blessings to all of us.

Thank you for being here for me.

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Overcoming Trauma Guided Meditation

Dealing with the underlying issues of trauma from your past gives you freedom from trauma which binds you and prevents you from having a full life.

Let’s do a little process together, you and me. Join me by taking three deep breaths. Breathe in (pause)
Breathe out (pause)
Breathe in (pause)
Breathe out (pause)
Breathe in (pause)
Breathe out (pause)

When I say my name, I want you to replace it with your name, follow along and repeat after me. I Rosa M Luna
see and draw to me through the divine love
and the Angels,
my spirit guides, and my God source,
all who seek enlightenment thru my process
to RE-Activate me Now!
To start feeling good, NOW!
I Rosa M Luna
Hold the key to the achievement of any state of being,
any state of health,
any state of wealth,
any state of anything!
I Rosa M Luna,
want and desire, let me focus on ME!
Starting with what I Rosa M Luna,
desires right NOW!
Re-activate my self-healing power
for my life extension NOW!
I Rosa M Luna
am a constant gatherer of experience and knowledge.
My life is not only about that!
It is about fulfillment, satisfaction
and one of JOY!
My life is a continuing expression of life and love
And who I, Rosa M Luna
truly am the creator of my own experience.
I, Rosa M Luna,
will learn to understand my
VIBRATIONAL EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.
Then my naturally joyful “zest” for life
will youthfully return.
I Rosa M Luna love myself!
Take a deep cleansing breath in

Exhale

Okay. We are done.

Congratulations. You are on the path to your new life.

Not all of us are doing this alone, for example, Johnnetta McSwain suffered childhood trauma at the age of 4 years old. Wrote a book about her trauma and went to school to get her Ph.D. She wrote a statement that I would like to quote – “Becoming self-aware that we are women of strength who stand for survival, empowerment, motherhood, leadership, love, nurturing, beauty, respect and courage to overcome anything.” These words are so encouraging to all of us that can remember them and apply them to our lives.

Now you can have an exciting new life free from the threat of diseases that are caused by not dealing with your trauma issues. You will achieve a state of healthful wellness, and you will look and feel younger, just by dealing with your past trauma. Like me. I have seen life at its worst and I thought it would be the death of me, but I have a new lease on life and am living the life of my dreams. Believe me when I say, “I know what you’re going through,” you are not alone. If I can do it, you can do it, too. My name is Rosa m. luna thank you for listening, and you can find me at Rosa M luna.com Many Blessings.

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Taking Back Our Life from Trauma

Let’s start to take your life back and live healthier and longer. You have to be in the right frame of mind to learn anything, let’s try the next steps. This will assist in learning new ways to heal ourselves from the damages of trauma’s afflictions.

Top 10 Ways to Recover from Trauma

1. Negative Emotions

Start by managing negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, guilt, let’s start by shifting the kind of thinking that takes you to those feelings. Instead of focusing on your losses, uncertainties, think of your successes. You’ve been able to keep a roof over your head. Food on your table, the important things you have been able to provide. Despite your pain and suffering, you’re not on serious drugs, you have been able to keep a job, like the job, or not.

2. Negative Thoughts

Traumatic events can agitate us to the core, leaving us in shambles both mentally and physically. But stop thinking negatively.

3. Grow Where You are Planted

Psychologists are also finding that traumatic actions can change us into more robust, better individuals. The name that is given to this global phenomenon is “posttraumatic post-growth.” So, grow. Grow wherever you are, however you can.

4. Self-care

Take one day at a time. Take care of yourself. Shower, eat a healthy meal, eat a healthy snack, dance to your favorite music, walk, run, in other words, exercise. Get that negative energy out of your system.

5. Social Care

Go outside, visit your positive friends, stay away from friends that have a negative lifestyle. Don’t judge them, just stay away from bad influences. Drinking, drugs are not the answer. Look inside yourself and find out what your body is trying to tell you.

6. Self-expansion

I know this may sound silly, but meditate, pray, try talking to a professional, a therapist, someone you trust. Did I already say go to a support group? You might just find more people going through what you are going through. Find some new friends there. They know what you are going through, you are not alone.

7. Your Story

In the next step, you produce a narrative story about your story and the trauma and reflection afterward to accept the chapters already written and imagine crafting the next ones in a meaningful way. Giving you a different and positive feeling about your traumatic story and the stories you’re helping can and should be about a traumatic past that leads to a better and brighter future.

8. Go Pro

Find work that benefits others and helps or benefits you and other people. There is a broader community of victims with events similar to the ones you are enduring. So, help others who are in trouble and face difficulty in overcoming trauma symptoms. This can give you a sense of growth and peaceful life.

9. Take Your Time

Be patient with this process. Those who are practicing in this field know that timing is very important. Growth is a long procedure of process and it takes time.

However, when you and your comrades are ready, it is worth the effort. Let’s promise to do what is best for ourselves and learn from this crisis and do something productive that may help others.

10. New Normal

Being inactive life, going back to what made you happy in the first place is the last step. Think about how you have been able to dig someone out of their self-pity, we cannot do it alone, and really, we are not alone, there are millions like us, also suffering from trauma.

Not all of us are doing this alone, for example, Johnnetta McSwain suffered childhood trauma at the age of 4 years old. Wrote a book about her trauma and went to school to get her Ph.D. She wrote a statement that I would like to quote – “Becoming self-aware that we are women of strength who stand for survival, empowerment, motherhood, leadership, love, nurturing, beauty, respect and courage to overcome anything.” These words are so encouraging to all of us that can remember them and apply them to our lives.

Remember that we are not alone. We can do this.

Many blessings to all of us and God bless.

 

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Live Healthier without Repressed Trauma

Trauma can rob you of your youth like a “thief in the night”. When you least expect it, you look in the mirror and see someone you do not recognize. You could live healthier without repressed trauma. So what happened?

For many of us, I would say that 85 percent of people will or have suffered a traumatic event in their lifetime. Some of these events will create significant pain and suffering especially if there is a near-miss of life loss.

Because trauma changes so many body cells, it causes hormonal changes, nerve damage, weakens the immune system, causes premature aging, and can lead to an early grave.

Take twenty years off of your age and add another twenty years to your life (that’s 40 years) just by doing this one thing:

Dealing with Your Repressed Trauma

Fortunately, your neuron cells can be re-wired and affect your mind,  your way of feeling safe in this world, your way of thinking, and solving problems. I could go on and on about the ways trauma damages and changes your life.

Unresolved trauma can affect the choices you make. What kind of boyfriend or girlfriend do you pick? Neglecting your children, losing your job, make you feel extremely angry, or very violent, and if you are aware of that,

“Wait that’s not me!

What is going on with me?”

Not all of us are aware of what we are doing.

I too, have suffered from trauma throughout my life and made bad decisions, and even made bad choices unconsciously without realizing it. Until I verified my actions with a witness I trusted.  I couldn’t believe that person was me.

Posttraumatic growth can be transformative and lead to living a longer more healthy and happy life.

Many people I have interviewed for my book “Trauma-ties,” told me that despite their physical pain and the daily struggles they have faced, some have said that their lives are actually better today than before their traumatic experiences. They make themselves focus more on themselves, what surrounds them, they pay more attention to people who aren’t doing well. They feel like they want to help them. Which before they didn’t want to get involved.

To move from the process of trauma growth, we should first educate ourselves and learn about trauma effects.  The American Psychological Association provided a definition of “trauma” they said,

An emotional response of someone against a special negative instance such as injury by accident, violent attacks bullying, domestic violence, childhood neglect, and many negative actions that leave a mark on your emotional status, and mental stability.

Some symptoms of trauma are Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, guilt, anxiety, hypervigilance, fear, irritability, behavioral issues, flashbacks, excessive anger, violence, panic attacks, loneliness, depression, all these can lead one open towards traumatic diseases and suicidal ideation.

Repressed trauma will find its way out. It will express itself in diseases such as diabetes, gastrointestinal diseases, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, or cancer, or in severe psychological disorders requiring mental health services.

This is serious business.

If you are ignoring or pushing down your trauma from the past you are sick and tired and your life is a mess.

There are too many diseases to name them all because we have not dealt with the unresolved traumatic event. We will have to deal with what happened to us. Or make amends to it. Make yourself ok with it.

If you can not heal from it get some professional help. Find a support group, I know you will prefer to stay at home and feel safe, depressed, and you will feel alone.

Shake the dust off you, that you have collected and get over yourself. Get your butt to a support group, I guarantee, you will later, be glad you did. And your life expectancy will increase dramatically. Many blessings and joyful health to you.

 

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How Will COVID-19 Affect Christmas Today?

I feel like we are being imprisoned for something we did wrong. What did we do? We are wearing our masks, staying at home instead of entertaining ourselves outside our homes, like walking through the streets watching the Christmas lights at this time of year. Going to different stores, and also seeing how other people decorated their homes for Christmas.

The shopping malls are open for shoppers, but with limited entries for a certain amount of people only. We also are limited in gathering with our families. This saddens me. I love gathering with my family during these special holidays.

I am going to miss this so much. First, it is going to be my daughter’s birthday. Then it’s my birthday, our survivor’s celebration (Survival Day), then Christmas. We would have many parties during December.

In the past, it was different. What is this Christmas going to look like this December 25, 2020?

With domestic violence already on the rise due to the pandemic restrictions, the holidays are bringing far more trouble to families across America than we ever bargained for.

It’s hard for the authorities and mental health providers to keep up with this growing epidemic, and already, we know that it is the season for increased suicide and violence among all age groups.

While I am writing this article, it is not Christmas yet. In my family, we celebrate during this time, before Christmas, because during the holiday season, many years ago, I was in one of my abusive marriages, and my kids and I escaped from this abuse during this time in December

Now, we use this as an excuse to celebrate our Survival Day. We have been celebrating this day for many years now.

We, as in my three children, their spouses, and my 5 grandchildren, sometimes invite other special people into our lives, but mainly it is, just us.

I am very proud of my children; they are finally free of their childhood trauma. Sometimes we go back and remember what we escaped from. We count our blessings.

In December, my husband had come home and he must have taken drugs because he was acting worse than ever. As I mentioned before in my writings, I would place a quarter in my older daughter’s pants pocket to escape from the house and call the police.  This time, I hid all the knives from the kitchen, told them to leave and go to our neighbors’ home and call the police.

It took the police hours to find my apartment because my daughter could not remember our apt. number. Until finally, in the middle of the night, he fell asleep and as I ran out of the apartment, the police stopped me and asked me if I was the one who had called the police? I said “Yes” and started to run off, and they stopped me saying they could not go in and arrest him unless I came in with them.  I was so frightened. “He was in bed asleep I told them, no weapons, I hid all the knives”.

When they placed him in handcuffs, I took my money (which he had taken from me) from his wallet and I used that money to leave him. We left with only the clothes on our backs. He used to stalk us, even with a restraining order in hand.

Now we celebrate our survival by giving gifts to each other, dinner, and having a fun time with peace of mind, knowing we are now safe to do as we please. My daughter reminded me of our situation back in the day, and how it was through her eyes.

May God continues to bless all of us who have survived, and many blessings to all.

 

 

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Our Parents Past Lives

How do the past lives of our parents affect us? We do not only pass on our history, our traditional food recipes, and stories from our grandpas and grandmas but even our traumas. Additionally, some of our ways to survive and our way of life.

Our trauma and our methods of protecting ourselves are threads. I had a client whose father was schizophrenic. He believed the Mexican mafia was after him. His son, who was 8 years old at the time, was living with him.

Dad would come to school, take him out of school, and they would drive for hours, trying to get away or move away, leaving everything behind. This was the way of my client’s life experience with his dad.

My client, as he grew up, had a problem with the Mexican race. Those problems were buried within him.  While going to college he had fallen in love with a Mexican girl who didn’t look, Mexican. Soon after he received this information from her, he started getting sick.

He started feeling weird, his stomach would hurt, he would get headaches, almost feeling frightened. Why?  He wanted to stay away from this girl. He confided in her one day when she asked if she did anything wrong?  He said he blurted out the following words. He wanted to know “if she had anything to do with the Mexican Mafia?” My client told her about his dad and his illness.

He said he felt relieved, and at the same time scared that she would judge him and think “this guy’s crazy.” His Girlfriend, (she must have really liked him) suggested he should get help. (Smart lady.)

This trauma was placed within him by his father, who was not medicated for his mental illness, affected his son for the rest of his life, and could have ruined a good relationship. Today, he is married to this lady, has children, a good job, and doing well.

How parent’s trauma, can affect their children’s lives is very real.

Our parent’s past lives and lives within each of us, are molded into our biology. We are all sculpted by experiences of threat and safety. They are like threads, both literally and metaphorically.

Long and thin, those threads stretch, not only through the spaces of our bodies, but back through time, even to the generations before we were conceived.

Scientific studies of trauma and adverse childhood experiences have revealed that children’s distress casts a much longer shadow of thread through our culture, more than we know or care to admit.

We now know that childhood traumas hover over us as adults, creating health conditions like heart disease, liver cirrhosis, obesity, drug use, alcoholism, diabetes, dementia, and many other diseases and illnesses.

If we don’t start raising our children gently and lovingly, we now know that we can start not only threading through the spaces of our children’s bodies, because of our unresolved traumas but pass it on to our grandchildren as well.

If we don’t increase our knowledge of how we can stop damaging our children, the children of our future, we are risking casting those threads to our children’s futures and the effect that could have on their children and their future, it could go on and on.

Let’s get the needed help, for the sake of our children and their future.

Many blessings to you all.

 

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Can My Body Remember?

In a few minutes…{pause}… Now, as I count backward from 3 to 1 you will wake up 3.-happy, 2- Refreshed, and 1- joyful!  NOW OPEN YOUR EYES!

I did not wake up Joyful!!! OH MY GOD! I prayed again and asked if this was true? I prayed and asked my Angels, My Guides, I asked my trusted Pendulum, I muscled tested my question and they all answered “YES”.

I felt like Crying…I felt very very grateful to my brain, my body, for protecting me from remembering this horrific experience. All these years and my body and my mind did not feel I was ready for this information until now.

My Protectors, Spirit knew I was going to experience more horrific experiences and needed me stronger emotionally and mentally because thru me I had three more spirits/souls to bring through. I also had some lives to save.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Now, I ask, “Why?” Why even bother to give me this information? Did I really needed to know, and why? How is this information going to assist me? Only Source and my spirit guides and my Angels know. I pray that someday that too will be reviled to me.

I find this as a message from my higher self, who is constantly taking care of me.  Even today, many years later, very grateful how my brain and my body covered up this part of my young unexplainable event of me to later be revealed.

Right after my revealing experience, I asked one of my brothers if they remembered my “Tio Lucio” my brother stated he was not our real Tio/uncle. He was just one of our uncle’s friends and because he was with one of the uncles we all called him uncle.

He disappeared and never came around again. I also talked to some of my older sisters and they remember him too, sort of, but never liked him. I would like to talk to one of my oldest sisters to check with her about stuff like this and see if she remembers me been gone for a long time. This information was revealed to me just some months before now. I am still investigating.

This could be one of the reasons why mom treated me differently from the other girls. My dear mom did not teach me to cook like she did my sisters. They had to learn how to cook, clean the whole house, learn to wash clothes, make tortillas, I did help make tortillas, get up at 4:30 in the morning to make them, and place them in a turkey pan. A very LARGE turkey pan.

My mother never insisted I learn any of the things she would teach my sisters. She would say that I would “probably will never marry.”  She probably thought I’d never been able to have sex. I don’t know.

I am not sure of what she thought, because she never talked to me about what happened. No one ever talked to me about that incident that happened to me. Just Dona Vita asked me if I remembered why I was in the hospital and what happened to me.

I could not remember.

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More Trauma

I remember waking up surrounded and blinded by very bright lights. If I was old enough to know better, I would have thought it was the Divine white light and I was crossing over. I screamed with pain “Put her back under!” a male voice yelled. (Obviously, I did not die).

I remember waking up again, seeing and hearing my mom sobbing really loud coming towards me. My head was raised enough to see that I was wearing a huge diaper and I saw I was hooked up to wires? Tubes? Other hospital equipment?…   Still feeling pain, but not as bad. I fell back to sleep.

I remember, my mother taking me to a curandera’s house. I was at Dona’s Vita’s house.  Dona Vita was our witch doctor/curandera healer. Everyone went to her for many many different things. This lady knew even medical things… I remember I used to be afraid of her.

Mom said I was to stay with her to help her sweep her kitchen every day until Dona Vita could do it herself. OK…I remember mom would always have us volunteer to help others who had just had babies, surgeries, or the elderly. I felt this was one of those times. So, I would wake up in the early mornings, and by my cot was a broom. I would use it to hold me up to sweep her kitchen floor.

I could not understand why it was so hard for me to stand and I felt weak, but I kept trying to sweep Dona Vitas’ floor. When I felt it was too hard for me Dona Vita said I could finish it later.

She would feed me something to eat and after eating she would give me some tea and I would get very sleepy and slept for most of the day.

With time, I got better at sweeping and not falling asleep. Dona Vita asked me one day if I remembered how I hurt myself? “You know, I must have hit my head too because I cannot remember!”

Ties to this Trauma – I do remember, I was at a doctor’s office.  He was checking me after I had my second child, asking, “How many children have you had?”

“Just two, I responded.”

“You have way too much scarring here, for just two children.”

This memory of the doctor’s office visit and his comment came to me instantly. Did this really happen?  I heard a loud “YES!”

“Now, as you re-evaluate this experience, this acknowledgment, how will this past trauma in this life help you have more joy, happiness, and closure?’

Remember to speak to your Angels and guides, to your God, and Goddess, to give you the much-needed answers. I will give you a couple of minutes to speak to them. May the answers you request give you the peace you need to overcome this new information.

And now go back to relaxing, feeling safe again, calm and relaxed, and go to a happy place in which you can relax and receive the much-needed answers …pause…

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Trauma Again

But who knows why I said “Si”? I don’t know, but it was a lie.… Then he showed me a bigger finger (I know now that it wasn’t a bigger finger but from the eyes of a 5-year-old child….)  he told me to place my hands on it and feel it. Did he place his hands over my hands, moving my hands violently up and down over his other bigger finger?

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, there was this substance that looked like white hand lotion only on my hands, running down my elbows and on my pretty dress.

Tio Lucio grabbed a yellow dirty crunchie hand towel that he must have kept under the seat and wiped my hands and dress with it and then himself.  “Can I go play on the merry-go-round now?”

But it was now getting dark.

He grabbed my underwear and helped me put them on. But I really just wanted to go home. I said, “I want to go home…”

It was dark outside now. I remember sitting away from him as he drove me back home. He did not stop in front of the house.

His arm crossed over me as he opened the passenger door and I remember jumping out running to the door of my house.

Tio Lucio drove away. I heard my brother yell “she’s home!”

“You are in big trouble”.

My mom asked, “Were you at the park?” I nodded yes and she spanked me with the belt and said, “Never to do that again especially by myself.” She stated she had sent the boys to look for me and they did not find me.

My mom would emphasize each syllable of her words with each strike of the belt. Hadn’t she seen my red eyes from crying so much? Didn’t I look like a mess?

Mom was so mad, she really didn’t see me or tried to hear what I was trying to tell her. I looked right at her face and eyes. Mom never looked directly into my eyes or face. Why?

I forgive her now because I did the same thing to my children; spank first and talk later. I am sure my mother had to deal with the same kind of guilt later.

My mom also worried because we lived close to the Labor Camp. The Labor Camp was like a village full of people who followed the harvests.

Some with their families, but mainly men. As I got into school, I had many friends (kids) there. But that’s another story for another time.

My next memory is that it happened again… I somehow found myself inside my Tio Lucio’s truck at the park… again. This time, it hurt much more, he started off with him penetrating me using his fingers.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the expressions he would make with his face.  Then he inserted something that hurt much more and so bad, I screamed and yelled for him to stop! He covered my mouth with his dirty fingers.

I remember the taste, the smell… on them. He was on top of me! He would not stop! He sounded like a bear to me. I would open my eyes at times just to check to see what kind of animal this was!

I was just a scrawny, skinny little 5-year-old girl! I was just a small girl! I saw a lot of red around me, blood. Lots of blood. The last thing I remember… I was feeling cold wrapped in a yellow towel seeing the world go around and around. I fell asleep…