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The Art of Healing and Loneliness

One of the main reasons that women don’t heal properly is that they do not like the idea of being alone.  Alone with themselves.  Alone with their thoughts.  Alone with God.  Alone with nature.  Alone with their bodies.  Being alone has a stigma associated with it.  “Oh, looky, she doesn’t have a man. What’s wrong with her?”

However, being alone is just what is needed in order for us to move from point A to point B and get to our destination.  That destination is the Promised Land of Canaan that God has for each one of us individually and collectively.

What we often don’t realize is that being alone and being lonely is two different things.  We are never truly alone because God is always with us.  We can be with a group of people and still be lonely.  But why? For Several reasons.  The first reason is that we may have failed to deal with the emotional loneliness that we experienced in childhood from our family’s love story garden.  People were present but unavailable for a variety of reasons, leaving us anxious and clawing for attention from everyone and everything but God.  We made mini-gods of people, places, things, and ideas to feed our addictions.

Secondly, when we fail to exhibit vulnerability by sharing our struggles, we don’t get the support that we need to make it through.  We take on the role of being everybody else’s savior instead of gaining the true and loving support that we need.

Healing is hard but necessary to gain an adequate assessment of who we really are according to how God created us, not who others have told us according to how they want us to be.  This process is called developing our self-concept.  Our self-concept gets marred by emotionally immature, narcissistic, and other individuals who have become bitter and resentful about their lives and need someone else to dump their projection and confusion on.

Healing is hard but it’s worth it.  Just like getting all the rain in spring enables beautiful flowers to appear, we all become the beautiful flowering trees that God created us to be in the Garden of Eden.

You are enough.  Reclaim your power, soul, and identity.  Grab your keys to the kingdom and get your inheritance.

Until next time,

Katina

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Episode 117: Healing is a Choice: An Interview with Jennifer Ramirez-Part 3

the valley of grace podcast
Healing Our Brokenness Podcast Series
Episode 117: Healing is a Choice: An Interview with Jennifer Ramirez-Part 3
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Do you want to get to the good stuff?  I know I do.  We want a magic pill for everything. Forget about the healing and the pain.  Later for that.  It sounds like the perfect plan. However, if your plan is to go from where you are now, to where you want to be, skipping over the pain will only take you back to where you are now. It may seem counterintuitive. However, the only way to the other side is through.  As Jennifer put it in this episode: “Healing is a choice.”  Creating an empowered new chapter of life requires healing from past hurts.  And when you are healed, you gain resilience and perspective that you couldn’t have gained otherwise.  Listen to the last part of this series between Jennifer and I as we dissect healing, our need for instant gratification, not enoughness and so much more.

Podcast Outline

  • Healing
  • Choices
  • Resilience
  • Flourishing
  • Instant Gratification
  • Not Enoughness
  • Fun Things about Jennifer

Until next time,

Katina

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The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma

Part 1: The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma

When we think of the sun, we automatically think of its natural ability to provide us with Vitamin D. And boy does it make a difference when it is out as opposed to when it’s not, especially when we are talking about a day like today in the Midwest where it is super windy. Have you ever stopped to think about the sun and its effect on trauma? If not, and you think you are alone, think again. I hadn’t given it that much thought until about eight years ago to be exact.

sun, emotional health, psychology, valley of grace, trauma, ptsd, emotional health, mental health, healing, from broken relatinships to resilience and flourishing
The Sun And Its Effect on Trauma-Photo by Tomas Hustoles at Burst by Shopify

After having a series of events that led to compounded trauma, I started noticing that the sun has a tremendous effect on how I am feeling once the seasons are nearing a significant change. It is so much so, that it can be disorienting. The sun itself is the main trigger, but surprisingly, what goes along with it is the manner and angle at which it is shining, etc. that makes it a trigger.

Part 2-The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma

For example, two weeks of last month was a challenge for me when the sun came out. Thankfully, I had my toolbox available and ready. As I sat at the table taking notes for my class, I observed how beautifully the sun was shining through the kitchen window. I also noticed that my body was having a reaction to it. The birds were singing their tune, and it sounded so pretty, yet something seemed off.

I knew that being still long enough would give me the answer. While listening to the teacher, I reminded myself, “This is a trauma trigger. The source of the sun causing havoc will soon be revealed.” And in no time it did. My mind went back to something that happened literally twenty-four years ago, on my birthday, when I had to rush and leave work because I thought I was having a heart attack, only to find out a few months later. Along with this revelation came the feelings along with it, as I sat there at the table.

Part 3-The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma

I allowed myself to feel the loneliness that I felt back then, allowing myself to remember it, and the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual toll that it took on my health; but then also reminding myself that it happened in the past. I could lean in, discover the origin, feel it, and then process, and move on with my day.

In the comments down below, would love to know if you have noticed how the sun and its presence triggers your trauma. If so, how were you able to get yourself back to a point of resiliency?

Thanks and be blessed y’all.

Katina

The Danger of Burnout

Black Bean Penne Pasta with Tomatoes

At Valley of Grace, we believe in thriving. In order to thrive, we have to begin grounding ourselves in our identity. The first step in making this happen, is dealing with the effects of our childhood wounds. Click here to get started in Online Therapy today.****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.

Are you saying to yourself, “I’m sick and tired of being in this state of languishing!” , but you are confused about how to get out? You need someone to walk you through the process, step by step. That’s what the course Broken Pieces is all about. This course walks you through with personalized videos, getting you to the heart of the matter. ****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.

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Episode 79: Reflecting on the Year 2020

the valley of grace podcast
Healing Our Brokenness Podcast Series
Episode 79: Reflecting on the Year 2020
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The year 2020 has had a lot of ups and downs. And to be honest, there seems to have been more downs than ups. In this podcast episode, I will go over some of the things that we have dealt with collectively, as well as individually. I will also dissect what we have as an anchor for the new year. In case you missed the last episode, you can click here to catch up.

thinking, reflections, racism, election, 2020, pandemic, birthday, poverty, culture, emotional health, mental health, trauma, loneliness, identity
Photo by Matthew Henry on Shopify

Episode 79 Podcast Outline

  • Deaths
  • Lockdown
  • Racism
  • Election
  • Thanksgiving
  • Convenience
  • Our Hope

Bible Verses to Meditate on:

1 Kings 19:19-20

So Elijah departed and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve teams of oxen, and he was with the twelfth team. Elijah passed by him and threw his cloak around him.20So Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, “Please let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, and then I will follow you.” “Go on back,” Elijah replied, “for what have I done to you?”…

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Who Can Separate Us?

Separation causes a lot of things.  For babies, the peak time for separation anxiety is between 10 to 18 months.  Even as adults, separation can be very difficult.  Due to immigration issues or other circumstances beyond our control, separation happens.  Families end up being torn apart.  In marriages, separation occurs for the sake of hoping that broken pieces are glued back together again.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve had close friends that I was separated from for years due to my moving or their moving, and somehow losing contact information.

Photos by Sarah Pflug

separation, love of Christ, simple functional grace-filled news, simple functional grace-filled living, friends, family, infants, love, forsaken, distress, sadness, loneliness, brokenhearted, mend, wounds

Unfortunately, when I was a teenager, through no fault of her own, my grandmother was separated from her brothers for years.  We didn’t have any of the contact information, and after so many years, she assumed that they all had died except for her.  As God would have it, when I was at my last place of residence a few years ago, I decided to do an ancestry search to see if I could find any information on my grandmother’s side of the family.  Lo and behold, I stumbled upon an obituary showing that there had been one brother left along with my grandmother.  He had died nine months after her. It made me sad to know that my grandmother hadn’t spoken to him in so long, how she must have felt, along with all the “what ifs” floating through my head.

Separation brings on two friends: sadness and loneliness.  These friends can only be mended by God himself, who is near to the brokenhearted.  Because we live in a fallen world, we are prone to separated from anyone and anything.  However, there is one thing that will always stand the test of time.  That is, the love of God.

separation, love of Christ, simple functional grace-filled news, simple functional grace-filled living, friends, family, infants, love, forsaken, distress, sadness, loneliness, brokenhearted, mend, wounds

Romans 8:35-39 New King James Version (NKJV)

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Be blessed,

Katina