What's the big deal?

What’s the BIG DEAL about childhood trauma, anyways?! And what’s the point in talking about it if it’s all in the past?

Ever heard these statements fall out of your own mouth before?

When I attended Freedom Academy I saw strobe lights coming from my childhood letting me know there was data there to explain the chronic physical pain and debilitating anxiety that I had been living with for several years. I didn’t know anything about our brain’s reaction to untended to trauma at the time, but I felt a deep “knowing” that these issues were story-related. This light beam to my childhood felt like my first sense of hope. 

Since then, I’ve attended story workshops, sought counseling, and shared in confidence with trusted friends so that my stories could be attuned to in really healing and beautiful ways. All of this was helping - talking about those experiences was a necessary part of my processing. 

And yet… my biggest shift toward freedom came from actually sitting in the grief (not just the data) that I’ve found in my story.

Crying literal tears, letting anger be heard without judgement, and mourning for the five-year-old girl that learned to be silent and compliant in ways that allowed harm. She dealt with things that she didn’t have the capacity to understand or process at five, and I have the honor to sit with her in her bedroom where she would spend a lot of her time dissociating. I was finally giving her space to cry and grieve the situations she needed to lock away; I was showing her that these moments mattered.

Because it turns out, those experiences weren’t “all in the past…” they were showing up in my unexplainable panic attacks, in the chronic pain that my left shoulder blade carried, and in my isolation and addictions. Those painful experiences were very much present in my adult life - they were just going unnamed. 

I’m not going to tell you that Freedom Academy is what healed my depression or stopped my panic attacks and chronic pain. That’s not exactly how it worked for me.

Freedom Academy was the catalyst to help me pay attention to my story and that three-day experience equipped me with the tools to start talking about the pain in my story, getting honest about my emotions in the presence of safe people, and grieving the experiences that have kept me bound.

And THAT’S what saved my life.
 

Mallory Albrecht
FREEDOM MOVEMENT
 

P.S. - If you’re feeling that burning desire of “Gosh, I need this!”, come and join the Freedom Cohort. You will find a community of women willing to walk with you as you learn to tend to the stories that aren’t all in the past, after all.

Click on the photo below to get more info.