October 7, 2025 • 30 mins
Jenifer DeBellis, MFA, is a PhD candidate, transformational speaker, and award-winning author of Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free (Library Tales Publishing), New Wilderness (Cornerstone Press), and Blood Sisters (Main Street Rag).
She edits Pink Panther Magazine and hosts the Restore Your Inner Warrior® podcast. She's featured in Psychology Today and her writing appears in CALYX, Medical Literary Messenger, The Good Men Project, Solstice, and elsewhere.
In This Episode
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You can learn more about what I do here:
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She edits Pink Panther Magazine and hosts the Restore Your Inner Warrior® podcast. She's featured in Psychology Today and her writing appears in CALYX, Medical Literary Messenger, The Good Men Project, Solstice, and elsewhere.
In This Episode
- Jenifer’s website
- Jenifer’s books
- Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free: A Survivor's Guide to Healing from Assault & Abuse with Courage & Hope
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Thank you to our Sponsors:
Incogni - Use code [traumatherapist] and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/traumatherapist
Jane App - use code GUY1MO at https://jane.app/book_a_demo
Journey Clinical - visit https://join.journeyclinical/trauma for 1 month off your membership
Therapy Wisdom - https://therapywisdom.com/jan/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Rivers podcast. My name is guiming Person,
and I interview incredible people who share the story of
how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
our sponsors. So five, four, three, two and one. All right, folks,
(00:24):
welcome back to the podcast. I'm very excited to have
as my guess today. Jennifer de Bellis. Jennifer, welcome, Thank
you so. Jennifer MFA is a PhD candidate, transformational speaker,
and award winning author of Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free,
New Wilderness, and Blood Sisters. She edits Pink Panther magazine
(00:44):
and hosts the Restore Your Inner Warrior podcast. She's featured
in Psychology Today, and her writing appears in Calix, Medical,
Literary Messenger, The Good Men Project, Solstice, and elsewhere. Jennifer,
welcome to the podcast. Just a little bit about you, obviously,
but before we go and share with our listeners where
(01:05):
you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I'm in the same place. So I'm born and raised
in Michigan.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I've lived other places, but God has me stuck in Michigan,
even though I keep trying to go somewhere with three
seasons or you know, with the pool all year.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, all right, so let's get to it. How did
you get into this field? How did this start for you?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It started pretty much when I was in the heat
of my own trauma. Actually, when I was a teenager
and a young adult, you know, just entering into adulthood.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I was coaching, so I was doing a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I was working with a lot of different athletics organizations,
and I also had an accident, a very traumatic accident,
a motorcycle accident that I almost died in, and it
seemed like my life at this time just really my
trauma was compounded. And I was also, you know, a
leader in a capacity where other people were experiencing their
(02:03):
own trauma.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So it was a really excuse me, you're talking about
trauma from the accident.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Trauma from the accident that also just made me have
to confront a lot of emotional trauma from my childhood.
In teen years that just started flooding me. Now that
I've had all this time, and you know, you have
a lot of time in your hands, you can't keep
yourself distracted and busy, which is how I coped.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I buried my grief.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I buried my trauma by staying very busy, being very productive,
being very helpful. And you know, during this time in
my early twenties, I was given a totally different opportunity
to deal with my own trauma, to learn some effective
strategies and you know, gain some tools, and I was
sharing them with other people. So my kind of coaching
(02:50):
other people through their trauma kind of began while I
was learning my you know, my own skills and having
my own trials and errors and then to be able
to say, you know, what worked for me.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And it was just that simple.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, let me let me back up a little bit
if we can, and talk about this to whatever depth
you feel comfortable with and stop me whatever. But so early,
what kind of how early did the trauma start?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Early? You know, I was a repeat survivor of physical violence, okay,
and lots of different capacities, you know, some in you know,
sexual content and some just physical you know, assault types
of things.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So as a teen was just like going on in
your household type thing, or it was.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
More like going on outside of the household, but certain
you know, certain behaviors were normalized where I just allowed
people to treat me a particular way. And you know,
people are very predatory, so the predators are looking for
people who are easy prey, who they know they will
get away with treating them a particular way. And I
(04:03):
just fell into these cycles of you know, not sticking
up for myself, not defending myself, not even paying attention
to the red flags of danger being present right now.
You know, most people would run from these situations, and
I was just blindly walking into them and not really
learning anything from these experiences. You know, how to protect
myself and you know, keep myself safe.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
How did you cope.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
While again I wasn't coping very well. You know, this
idea of resilience, I hate that word. It's thrown around
so much in our culture, and there's a good side
and a bad side to it. But I think when
we say resilience, it's almost like that mask that we
put on that's like we're good, we're fine.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And I did master that.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I mastered that always being happy laughing in the face
of tragedy and trauma.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I still deal with that.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I still laugh very easily, laugh at inappropriate times, although
I'm much more healed and whole and co evident now
in my later years than I ever was back then.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But you know, I had.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
All these coping skills and being resilient and just you know,
people like she just always bounces back. Nothing seems to
face her, nothing seems to keep her down.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And I don't necessarily believe that that was the case.
I just wasn't dealing with it. So it was like a.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Mountain that was Boyden's denial over perfectionism.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, absolutely yourself.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We're We're were your parents they were there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, you know, but you grew up in the
eighties and your parents were like, go play outside all day.
Why don't want to see you until it's dinner time?
The times were different, so you know, my parents, I don't.
I know that my parents didn't realize what kind of
trouble we were getting into or what kind of things
were happening. You know, now they know because I share
(05:54):
these things in my writing, But I don't think a
lot of parents knew what was going on, even under
their own roof. Like the place is where I was going,
and these things were happening, you know, it just times
were different. Parents were not helicopter parents back then. I
have one friend that I remember having a helicopter parent.
The rest were kind of like, even if we were
at their house, we were so far deep into the
(06:15):
house where the walls were sound proof, you know, just
just the times were different.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, totally totally get that and know that. So
you talked about coaching.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yes, so I've got coaching through throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I've had different roles in my communities, you know, whether
it was at church. For years, I coached young adult
women and teens and even young moms. And then I
went back to college and started formerly training and writing.
But a lot of even my PhD right now is
focused on studying the psychology of certain historical and mythological
(06:57):
female characters who embody this kind of like warrior, kind
of survivor spirit.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So all of my studies were kind of centered on
that kind of you know, I didn't go into.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Psychiatry or psychology, but I was always studying that in
my writing, and it was always pouring over into the
you know, it didn't matter if that if I was
coaching someone, like if they were hiring me or coming
to see me as a counselor even that they just
worked with me. They just noticed right away I was safe,
you know that that word safe. They noticed that I
(07:30):
was a safe space for them to just start sharing things.
And I don't know why people tell me the things
that they tell me. It just is a higher calling.
I understand it's part of my purpose and I seem
to be just a magnet for it. And people can
also sense your capacity for compassion, and I think that
also comes through going through my own post traumatic growth experiences.
(07:54):
And now I just they just sense it, you know
that puppy dog look where they're like, Oh, she gets me,
She's amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's totally awesome. So you said you
experienced an accident. Was it a car accident?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Car hit me hit Yeah? I was in a motorcycle
accident four weeks before my wedding.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Okay wow. And it was that event that you said
opened up the portals that kind of force you to
deal with what had gone on. Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So, I, you know, was going through the physical therapy
and I didn't understand why I was struggling more mentally
with everything that was going on. And this was also
a really amazing time of my life where I'm getting
ready to marry my best friend, and you know, we've
got all these things going on, and I'm trying not to.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Let that fall off. The edge of the earth is like,
I'm still going to get married, I'm still going to heal.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And so I was doing all these things for my
physical healing, and I just felt very fragile, and I'm
sure that I wore that expression on my face because
my physical therapist was asking me, how were you doing?
And my physical therapy was very painful. I mean it
was excruciating. And I went through that for two and
a half years of physical time.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And you know, those first.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Six months, even after I got married, all these good
things are happening for me, and I just feel like
I was walking around in a fog. And my physical
therapist finally said to me one day, you know, have
you seen a therapist? And I was like, no, like
I've seen therapists in the past, and so he recommended
me to someone in the in their network and I
went to see her, and she wasn't anyone who could
(09:41):
personally relate to any of my experiences and some of
the things that she was saying, I was like, she's
just she's not my person. She's not the right person
for me here.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I mean I say that now. Back then, I was like,
I don't know about therapy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Well did you excuse me a second. Did you during
this time when you were going through have and you
were struggling psychologically mentally as you said we were you
making connections to what had happened previously.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Absolutely, you were like the floodgates opened. And I wasn't
really talking about it to anyone because here I'm really married,
my husband's and I going understand all of these things.
So some of the things I was talking about, but
it was like lots of voices in the head, lots
of busy things all you know, going on at the
same time, and I'm like a crud, Like how do
(10:35):
I deal with this? How do I stop the voices?
How do I stop all this?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And so one thing that made a difference for me, though,
is the therapist in that office. They had Coogler Ross's
Five Stages of Grief, and I took that pamphlet back
with me and I started reading it and I was like, Okay,
some of this applies to me, some of it doesn't.
And then I just started journaling because that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I'm a writer. That was a thing that I do.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And when I started journaling, I started incorporating some of
that grief language into my journals and recognizing, oh my god,
grief is really complicated and it's not just this like
curl up in a ball, don't get out of bed,
cry it out, angry fisted tears, beat the pillow, and
then go on with it. Which was the only really
like the understanding that I had of grief. And that
(11:23):
is where I started to apply a lot of self
help strategies and I knew what to start looking for then,
because once you have a name for something, you can say, okay,
let me look more into this. Let me go to
the library, let me see what I can find, because
you know, we didn't have internet back then, what I
can find on these things and start reading.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And I'm an avid reader, so that's what I started doing.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I started reading on particular things and having these breakthroughs.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Once I knew and once I built a vocabulary, I
could then.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You know, have a different understanding and then tackle things,
because trauma is all about tackling it.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Get specific, what talk about one of these breaks throughs.
What did it look like for you?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Uh? One of the breakthroughs?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Okay, So I have my own eight stages, So shot
and denial is my first stage, then pain, then recall.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Then.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
More paid, more paid, and.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Then oh my god, I just had a brain freeze.
Guilt and shame.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So I'm gonna come back to that one because that's
right in the middle for a reason, anger, depression, hope
and acceptance.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And then recovery was.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
The last one I put in there because I feel
like if you have whatever trauma is, you're always in recovery,
just like if you're recovering from anything, you're always in
recovery because then you could always cycle back into something,
and you recognize what you have to do when those
triggers come, when those temptations come to fall back into
bad patterns or old you know, labels. And so for me,
(12:55):
the guilt and shame that was number one. That that
was the breakthrough for me was all of the guilt
and the shame that I carried around for a lot
of different things.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You know, as you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Get older and you look back at your childhood and
something that happens and you think, why the heck did
I let that happen. That's a very common thing. We
live in a culture where people say that stuff to you.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
How could I let that happen?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, well you deserve that.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Look what you put yourself in, or look how you
can conduct yourself or carry yourself. And it's that culture
of thinking that's so backward and insensitive, and so that
was a part of my experience growing up, was this
idea of this shame, this compounded shame and guilt of
a lot of things. I was already in that mindset,
(13:48):
wearing that identity of those labels when this hit me
really hard.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And so then it was like, you know, can you.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Think of a way to make me feel worse about
myself in every capacity, ever layer of my being? Boom here,
I am, oh.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Keep smiling.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
That's where I was in that moment of guilt and shame,
and I don't want to stay here. And you have
to get to that point where you're in the gutter
and you're on your you're crawling your army, crawling out
of that awful, yucky, dark place that you.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Say, I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I know what it's like to enjoy parts of life,
and I want that to be my life all the time.
And so you have to have that hunger and that
hope of a future that you have to have a
specific vision of what your future self wants and is
going to look like, so that you're chasing that and
you're fighting for that. And I think you know that
(14:42):
was that was a big wake up for me.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. So during that time,
you had just gotten married m h and were you
thinking to yourself? What were you thinking to yourself? I mean,
what how did you get to the gutter point being
(15:07):
newly married? What did that contrast intersection look like? How
are you? What are you sharing? What are you not sharing?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, I was sharing things.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
You know, my husband and I have a very open
relationship as far as like communication. We talk a lot
more than a lot of couples that I know, and
so I was sharing a lot of stuff, but I
wasn't sharing the raw of it. I had so much
to share so it really didn't matter. But I was
sharing more of the once I was like identifying and
overcoming and there was a lot of good that came
(15:39):
out of that. Because my husband has a lot of
trauma from physical violence of his own in the back,
in his past, and so what.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I was sharing with him was ministering to him in
ways that I really didn't realize.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I didn't plan that and script that out, but I
was sharing things with him and with others that I
had already gotten past, a really raw, vulnerable thing, because
back then I wasn't ready to make myself completely vulnerable,
because I didn't feel safe in that capacity with anybody,
(16:10):
and I had good reasons to not feel safe with anybody.
I had a lot of chronic issues with friendships and
trust and you know, abandonment and all those things. They
weren't fears of those things, they were real manifestations in
my life. And so I also had to work on
letting people back in and trusting people to be completely vulnerable.
(16:30):
And if you asked me back then, well, you know
you're going to do this stuff in the future that
I'm doing right now, I would have left and left
and left in no way.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I would have been saying, you're crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Do you know me?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
You're crazy? And then here I am.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
So you know, there was that moment where I was
just sharing what I felt comfortable and ready to share.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Well, you it sounds like you would do a lot
of this by yourself, Yes, therapist, coach, did you have someone?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No? So I No, so I had Again, I was
doing a lot of reading, and I also read.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
A lot of classic literature.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Believe it or not, I was gravitating toward these narratives
that had these same kind of overcomer female protagonists who
were coming out of their struggles, and I was drawing
so much.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Encouragement from that.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
I was, you know, drawing encouragement from talking to other
survivors of physical violence and seeing them make progress.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Also and being online. Well this was before online, but
I do that now. Okay, So but even back then,
how was I? You know?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I was doing that. I was doing those things. And
you know, over the years, I've my husband has had
a couple of really good therapists, and I've gone with them.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
But I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Every time I went to therapy, the therapists kind of
shook their head like you seem to have all the
skills you need.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And then I started to say, well, what the heck
happens at therapy?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I thought part of it is just coming and being
like waw, let me tell someone everything other than my
journal or.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
God, this this is all the ugly.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And you know, people therapist after therapists would just say
to me, you have the skills. You know, they'd seen
me one or two times and then they would be like,
you're good. And that just to me was mind blowing.
So I think that just drove me harder to be like, Okay,
keep doing what you're doing, keep being a good you know,
advocate for.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Your in defensive therapists. It's not just about that, right, Oh,
there's a lot of other things that go on, yes,
but all right, let me just remind everyone I'm speaking
with Jennifer de Bellis. So you obviously are not only
very empathic and compassionate, but you are like you exude
(18:58):
this what is it? This rank, this this warrior spirit?
Obviously it comes through How did you get to this
point or when did you get to this point, Jennifer
where you're like, Okay, I want to help others, maybe
I can help others. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I've always been that way so well.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
With this in this context specifically, I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Oh so okay, So aside from all those things in
my younger years, now fast forward, I go back to
college to train as a writer and to teach at
the college level. And I'm still in a smaller capacity
ministering to people and coaching different young adults who I
go to college with.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
When you said coaching, do you mean sports and sports?
Oh no, no, no, no, life coaching.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Coaching clients through where people want to do one on one,
you know, self help sessions like Okay, tell me, walk
me through how to deal with anger, walk me through
how to deal with you know.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
So I would do these and a very science fact.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I'm very into reading scholarly literature and backing everything up
with science and what the industry standards are. I'm not
trying to.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Say chuck it all up.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And I do also encourage people to go to their
therapists and I help them come up with the right
types of questions and things maybe to focus on with
their therapist.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So I'm kind of like a companion to a few
people over the years.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
But aside from that, and I was trying to get
out of that because I was trying to build a
totally different area of my life. So now fast forward,
my first book comes out, which is my coming of
age Stories. There's a lot of physical violence in this book,
and there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Overcoming of it.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And I am out touring with a book, and every
time I would share any of the work from that
particular or those topics, young women will come up to
me after the readings and say all these very complimentary things.
Oh my god, I can't believe you got through that.
Oh my god, Really you seem so confident, you got
your crap together. And it just, you know, the back
(21:10):
of my head. I just kept walking away from these
experiences almost broken hearted, thinking, Wow, there are all of
these women who their lives are just starting, and they're
carrying around.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
So much heavy baggage.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
They're not living, they're not even living in a quarter
of their potential because they're weighted down and don't know
how to cut themselves free from all this trauma.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
And so it kind of again, I'm meditating on it.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
I go to a reading, I have an experience, and
I come back from that experience and I'm like, I
have to write the book.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I have to write the book.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Like it was just at that moment where I was like,
I wish I had a book to get this teenager
who had just told me she just literally that day
came out of the hospital after she tried to kill
herself a third time, and she's showing me very real scars,
and she you knew how to cut herself the right
way too, And so I'm looking at it, going, God,
thank god you didn't succeed. But as her grandma's pulling
her out of this reading, I'm going, oh my god,
I wish I had a book. I could just put
(22:08):
it in her hands. I had nothing, just a few words,
and I went home and I said, I'd got to
write the book.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And that was the first What was that book in
the sense, what did you want to say to that
young girl?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Well, first of all, that she's not alone, that she's
not crazy for all the things that she's struggling with
and doesn't know how to deal with them and doesn't
know how to get past them, that those are all
very normal things, and that there is a way, there
is a way out, not only to get beyond those
struggles and to loose the grip of that trauma, but
(22:46):
there's a way to live with happiness, a fulfilling life
where you feel like you are thriving within your purpose
and living confidently and more equipped to when other things arise.
In your life, because you don't get through trauma and
then never experience trauma again. It's not all life works.
And so I wanted to give young girls like her
(23:07):
a pocket companion that had all kinds of things I
wished I had had when I was first overwhelmed with
my trauma and didn't know how to deal with it. So,
you know, it's a lot of different things. It's the
information that they need, it's the strategies that they need.
It's this self guided monthly journaling thing where you're going
(23:29):
back and investing in yourself and changing your perspective on
things and figuring out what your triggers really are because
a lot of times we don't understand what the triggers are,
and we have to with a lot of different guided approaches,
whether it's working with a therapist, working with your counselor
at school, or a trusted group you know, support group,
(23:50):
or a trusted friend or family member, or a coach
or somebody else where you know, in all these other
self help strategies, any combination of these things, sometimes all
of them are necessary in order for you to be
able to tap into what are these triggers? How do
I deal with the things that I need to deal with,
cut myself completely free from the things I don't need
(24:11):
to deal with. Because a lot of times survivors of
trauma hold on to the labels of the experience, and
then they think those labels are what identify them and.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
No labels like like what abuse?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Oh yeah, like yeah, like abuse, like like victim.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You know, uh, there's a lot, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Even the label survivor like suggests that you have you
have endured something. And you know, there's all types of
you know, labels, other labels too, where the guilt and
chap comes in. You're the troublemaker, You're the one who.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Asked for it.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
All the different labels that come in you. Why does
this keep happening to you? Because you're an idiot, you know.
So when I say labels, it's a very complicated thing.
And sometimes we think that those labels are what identify us,
but really they do shape our character. But we can
let go of those things and live a life free
(25:06):
of them because they don't they don't have a place
in our life. There's never a place in your life
where you have to walk around and say, I'm a loser,
I'm an idiot. I'm a repeat victim all those things
and you add them all up into the same sentence,
and you know, talk about overwhelming. Why get out of
bed in the morning. That's depressing, right right?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, I mean as you're enumerating all these aspects and
elements of this process, of this journey in and of
itself is overwhelming. I mean there's so many things. Yes,
you talked about, So all right, as we kind of
wind down here, what what are you doing now? How
are you working? Who are you working with?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You know, my book Where Your Sister Cut Yourself Free
came out in a second edition, which I'm really excited
that I get a seconds on it.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
My publisher, Library Tales Publishing.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Partnered with this distribution partnership with Simon and Schuster, and
they went through the catalog and they picked my book
as a book that they believed didn't get its fair
chance because it came out during the pandemic. So this
is going on, and I'm also at the same time
developing this podcast series, Restore Your Inner Warrior, which is
a broader range of just dealing with trauma. So I'm
(26:24):
trying to move beyond just this niche of just dealing
with people who are overcoming abuse and types of physical
violence trauma to say, we all have different points of trauma,
and some of the struggles are very similar. And everywhere
I was going to speak also, they were asking me
(26:44):
to censor this, you know the talk. Can you not
use those words? Can you just talk about it on
a broader scale. But I started thinking about, you know
what we rally, we really need people to talk about
it on a larger scale. So that's when I started saying,
let me incorporate a lot of these principles into a
broader approach to dealing with overcoming trauma and re establishing
(27:10):
or for the very first time, some people are building
their self esteem and confidence. And so that's what I'm
doing right now, is I am trying to come up
with literature in the form of self help books and
also this podcast series because a lot of my readers
don't want to sit down and read, They want to
just pop in their buds and walk around. And I
(27:32):
so that's what I'm doing right now as I'm developing
these broader messages.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Now is the podcast series? Is it one where you're
interviewing people or is it you solo or both?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's both. I just started it.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I just got through my first four weeks, and you know,
the first few weeks was really me trying to get
through the different parts of the second self help book
that I'm working on, Rectore or Your Inner Warrior, and
it felt more scripted. But you know, once you commit
to something, you're like follow it through and then learn
from it. So again I'm learning from like, Okay, don't
(28:10):
have to get so deep into one episode. You can
split it into three. But you know, I'm working on that.
I have a couple of guests who I want to
bring on. I actually want to do a couple of
book club types of things. So I have a book
club that's going to come on and do a Q
and A with me. So I'm gonna do a whole
bunch of things because you know, I want I want
(28:30):
to experiment with what listeners will respond to and maybe
don't respond to all of them.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Finally, here, if I was to ask you, like, what
your mission is, what would you say that is? How
would you respond?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Hmm?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So my mission is to really help people see that
they hold the power to restore that inner warrior. They
hold the power, and however they bring in the help.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what that help looks like.
We're not created to be an isolation. So find community,
find that outside support. Whatever that system looks like for you,
(29:11):
you have to create it. Also, there's no one formula
that that you can just plug yourself into and say, okay,
this works. So my really mission is to be one
of the outlets that is a safe space for all
types of survivors of trauma to come and find community,
to find that support, to share their own stories so
(29:33):
that they also feel heard, receive that compassion that we
all crave. We all crave that compassion when you meet
people who don't only speak your language, but they speak
your dialect.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And that's what.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So that's the type of community that I am trying
to cultivate. And you know, so I think maybe I
answered in a roundabout way. My mission is wrapping all
of these things up into one.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I love it, Love it Jennifer to us, how do
people reach you and learn more about your books and
your podcast series and what you have going on. It's
the best way.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So two ways.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
So my website Jennifer devellis and that's j E N
I F E R D E b E L l
I S dot com or Restore your Inner Warrior dot com.
And that's the same name as the podcast Restore Your
Inner Warrior, which is available in audio and video on
every streaming platform that there is out there.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So those are the two best ways to find information, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
We'll have all that link up here at the show
notes page at the Trauma Theapist podcast dot com. Jennifer,
You're awesome. Love to have you back at later date,
so inspiring. Thank you for being here, Thank you for
having me all right, Take care mean too.
Welcome to the Trauma Rivers podcast. My name is guiming Person,
and I interview incredible people who share the story of
how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
our sponsors. So five, four, three, two and one. All right, folks,
(00:24):
welcome back to the podcast. I'm very excited to have
as my guess today. Jennifer de Bellis. Jennifer, welcome, Thank
you so. Jennifer MFA is a PhD candidate, transformational speaker,
and award winning author of Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free,
New Wilderness, and Blood Sisters. She edits Pink Panther magazine
(00:44):
and hosts the Restore Your Inner Warrior podcast. She's featured
in Psychology Today, and her writing appears in Calix, Medical,
Literary Messenger, The Good Men Project, Solstice, and elsewhere. Jennifer,
welcome to the podcast. Just a little bit about you, obviously,
but before we go and share with our listeners where
(01:05):
you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I'm in the same place. So I'm born and raised
in Michigan.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I've lived other places, but God has me stuck in Michigan,
even though I keep trying to go somewhere with three
seasons or you know, with the pool all year.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, all right, so let's get to it. How did
you get into this field? How did this start for you?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It started pretty much when I was in the heat
of my own trauma. Actually, when I was a teenager
and a young adult, you know, just entering into adulthood.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I was coaching, so I was doing a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I was working with a lot of different athletics organizations,
and I also had an accident, a very traumatic accident,
a motorcycle accident that I almost died in, and it
seemed like my life at this time just really my
trauma was compounded. And I was also, you know, a
leader in a capacity where other people were experiencing their
(02:03):
own trauma.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
So it was a really excuse me, you're talking about
trauma from the accident.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Trauma from the accident that also just made me have
to confront a lot of emotional trauma from my childhood.
In teen years that just started flooding me. Now that
I've had all this time, and you know, you have
a lot of time in your hands, you can't keep
yourself distracted and busy, which is how I coped.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I buried my grief.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I buried my trauma by staying very busy, being very productive,
being very helpful. And you know, during this time in
my early twenties, I was given a totally different opportunity
to deal with my own trauma, to learn some effective
strategies and you know, gain some tools, and I was
sharing them with other people. So my kind of coaching
(02:50):
other people through their trauma kind of began while I
was learning my you know, my own skills and having
my own trials and errors and then to be able
to say, you know, what worked for me.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And it was just that simple.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, let me let me back up a little bit
if we can, and talk about this to whatever depth
you feel comfortable with and stop me whatever. But so early,
what kind of how early did the trauma start?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Early? You know, I was a repeat survivor of physical violence, okay,
and lots of different capacities, you know, some in you know,
sexual content and some just physical you know, assault types
of things.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So as a teen was just like going on in
your household type thing, or it was.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
More like going on outside of the household, but certain
you know, certain behaviors were normalized where I just allowed
people to treat me a particular way. And you know,
people are very predatory, so the predators are looking for
people who are easy prey, who they know they will
get away with treating them a particular way. And I
(04:03):
just fell into these cycles of you know, not sticking
up for myself, not defending myself, not even paying attention
to the red flags of danger being present right now.
You know, most people would run from these situations, and
I was just blindly walking into them and not really
learning anything from these experiences. You know, how to protect
myself and you know, keep myself safe.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
How did you cope.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
While again I wasn't coping very well. You know, this
idea of resilience, I hate that word. It's thrown around
so much in our culture, and there's a good side
and a bad side to it. But I think when
we say resilience, it's almost like that mask that we
put on that's like we're good, we're fine.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And I did master that.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I mastered that always being happy laughing in the face
of tragedy and trauma.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I still deal with that.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I still laugh very easily, laugh at inappropriate times, although
I'm much more healed and whole and co evident now
in my later years than I ever was back then.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But you know, I had.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
All these coping skills and being resilient and just you know,
people like she just always bounces back. Nothing seems to
face her, nothing seems to keep her down.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And I don't necessarily believe that that was the case.
I just wasn't dealing with it. So it was like a.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Mountain that was Boyden's denial over perfectionism.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, absolutely yourself.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We're We're were your parents they were there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, you know, but you grew up in the
eighties and your parents were like, go play outside all day.
Why don't want to see you until it's dinner time?
The times were different, so you know, my parents, I don't.
I know that my parents didn't realize what kind of
trouble we were getting into or what kind of things
were happening. You know, now they know because I share
(05:54):
these things in my writing, But I don't think a
lot of parents knew what was going on, even under
their own roof. Like the place is where I was going,
and these things were happening, you know, it just times
were different. Parents were not helicopter parents back then. I
have one friend that I remember having a helicopter parent.
The rest were kind of like, even if we were
at their house, we were so far deep into the
(06:15):
house where the walls were sound proof, you know, just
just the times were different.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, totally totally get that and know that. So
you talked about coaching.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yes, so I've got coaching through throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I've had different roles in my communities, you know, whether
it was at church. For years, I coached young adult
women and teens and even young moms. And then I
went back to college and started formerly training and writing.
But a lot of even my PhD right now is
focused on studying the psychology of certain historical and mythological
(06:57):
female characters who embody this kind of like warrior, kind
of survivor spirit.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So all of my studies were kind of centered on
that kind of you know, I didn't go into.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Psychiatry or psychology, but I was always studying that in
my writing, and it was always pouring over into the
you know, it didn't matter if that if I was
coaching someone, like if they were hiring me or coming
to see me as a counselor even that they just
worked with me. They just noticed right away I was safe,
you know that that word safe. They noticed that I
(07:30):
was a safe space for them to just start sharing things.
And I don't know why people tell me the things
that they tell me. It just is a higher calling.
I understand it's part of my purpose and I seem
to be just a magnet for it. And people can
also sense your capacity for compassion, and I think that
also comes through going through my own post traumatic growth experiences.
(07:54):
And now I just they just sense it, you know
that puppy dog look where they're like, Oh, she gets me,
She's amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's totally awesome. So you said you
experienced an accident. Was it a car accident?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Car hit me hit Yeah? I was in a motorcycle
accident four weeks before my wedding.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Okay wow. And it was that event that you said
opened up the portals that kind of force you to
deal with what had gone on. Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So, I, you know, was going through the physical therapy
and I didn't understand why I was struggling more mentally
with everything that was going on. And this was also
a really amazing time of my life where I'm getting
ready to marry my best friend, and you know, we've
got all these things going on, and I'm trying not to.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Let that fall off. The edge of the earth is like,
I'm still going to get married, I'm still going to heal.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And so I was doing all these things for my
physical healing, and I just felt very fragile, and I'm
sure that I wore that expression on my face because
my physical therapist was asking me, how were you doing?
And my physical therapy was very painful. I mean it
was excruciating. And I went through that for two and
a half years of physical time.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And you know, those first.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Six months, even after I got married, all these good
things are happening for me, and I just feel like
I was walking around in a fog. And my physical
therapist finally said to me one day, you know, have
you seen a therapist? And I was like, no, like
I've seen therapists in the past, and so he recommended
me to someone in the in their network and I
went to see her, and she wasn't anyone who could
(09:41):
personally relate to any of my experiences and some of
the things that she was saying, I was like, she's
just she's not my person. She's not the right person
for me here.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I mean I say that now. Back then, I was like,
I don't know about therapy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Well did you excuse me a second. Did you during
this time when you were going through have and you
were struggling psychologically mentally as you said we were you
making connections to what had happened previously.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Absolutely, you were like the floodgates opened. And I wasn't
really talking about it to anyone because here I'm really married,
my husband's and I going understand all of these things.
So some of the things I was talking about, but
it was like lots of voices in the head, lots
of busy things all you know, going on at the
same time, and I'm like a crud, Like how do
(10:35):
I deal with this? How do I stop the voices?
How do I stop all this?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And so one thing that made a difference for me, though,
is the therapist in that office. They had Coogler Ross's
Five Stages of Grief, and I took that pamphlet back
with me and I started reading it and I was like, Okay,
some of this applies to me, some of it doesn't.
And then I just started journaling because that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I'm a writer. That was a thing that I do.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And when I started journaling, I started incorporating some of
that grief language into my journals and recognizing, oh my god,
grief is really complicated and it's not just this like
curl up in a ball, don't get out of bed,
cry it out, angry fisted tears, beat the pillow, and
then go on with it. Which was the only really
like the understanding that I had of grief. And that
(11:23):
is where I started to apply a lot of self
help strategies and I knew what to start looking for then,
because once you have a name for something, you can say, okay,
let me look more into this. Let me go to
the library, let me see what I can find, because
you know, we didn't have internet back then, what I
can find on these things and start reading.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And I'm an avid reader, so that's what I started doing.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I started reading on particular things and having these breakthroughs.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Once I knew and once I built a vocabulary, I
could then.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You know, have a different understanding and then tackle things,
because trauma is all about tackling it.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Get specific, what talk about one of these breaks throughs.
What did it look like for you?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Uh? One of the breakthroughs?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Okay, So I have my own eight stages, So shot
and denial is my first stage, then pain, then recall.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Then.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
More paid, more paid, and.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Then oh my god, I just had a brain freeze.
Guilt and shame.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So I'm gonna come back to that one because that's
right in the middle for a reason, anger, depression, hope
and acceptance.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And then recovery was.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
The last one I put in there because I feel
like if you have whatever trauma is, you're always in recovery,
just like if you're recovering from anything, you're always in
recovery because then you could always cycle back into something,
and you recognize what you have to do when those
triggers come, when those temptations come to fall back into
bad patterns or old you know, labels. And so for me,
(12:55):
the guilt and shame that was number one. That that
was the breakthrough for me was all of the guilt
and the shame that I carried around for a lot
of different things.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
You know, as you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Get older and you look back at your childhood and
something that happens and you think, why the heck did
I let that happen. That's a very common thing. We
live in a culture where people say that stuff to you.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
How could I let that happen?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, well you deserve that.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Look what you put yourself in, or look how you
can conduct yourself or carry yourself. And it's that culture
of thinking that's so backward and insensitive, and so that
was a part of my experience growing up, was this
idea of this shame, this compounded shame and guilt of
a lot of things. I was already in that mindset,
(13:48):
wearing that identity of those labels when this hit me
really hard.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And so then it was like, you know, can you.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Think of a way to make me feel worse about
myself in every capacity, ever layer of my being? Boom here,
I am, oh.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Keep smiling.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
That's where I was in that moment of guilt and shame,
and I don't want to stay here. And you have
to get to that point where you're in the gutter
and you're on your you're crawling your army, crawling out
of that awful, yucky, dark place that you.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Say, I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I know what it's like to enjoy parts of life,
and I want that to be my life all the time.
And so you have to have that hunger and that
hope of a future that you have to have a
specific vision of what your future self wants and is
going to look like, so that you're chasing that and
you're fighting for that. And I think you know that
(14:42):
was that was a big wake up for me.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. So during that time,
you had just gotten married m h and were you
thinking to yourself? What were you thinking to yourself? I mean,
what how did you get to the gutter point being
(15:07):
newly married? What did that contrast intersection look like? How
are you? What are you sharing? What are you not sharing?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You know, I was sharing things.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
You know, my husband and I have a very open
relationship as far as like communication. We talk a lot
more than a lot of couples that I know, and
so I was sharing a lot of stuff, but I
wasn't sharing the raw of it. I had so much
to share so it really didn't matter. But I was
sharing more of the once I was like identifying and
overcoming and there was a lot of good that came
(15:39):
out of that. Because my husband has a lot of
trauma from physical violence of his own in the back,
in his past, and so what.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I was sharing with him was ministering to him in
ways that I really didn't realize.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I didn't plan that and script that out, but I
was sharing things with him and with others that I
had already gotten past, a really raw, vulnerable thing, because
back then I wasn't ready to make myself completely vulnerable,
because I didn't feel safe in that capacity with anybody,
(16:10):
and I had good reasons to not feel safe with anybody.
I had a lot of chronic issues with friendships and
trust and you know, abandonment and all those things. They
weren't fears of those things, they were real manifestations in
my life. And so I also had to work on
letting people back in and trusting people to be completely vulnerable.
(16:30):
And if you asked me back then, well, you know
you're going to do this stuff in the future that
I'm doing right now, I would have left and left
and left in no way.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I would have been saying, you're crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Do you know me?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
You're crazy? And then here I am.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
So you know, there was that moment where I was
just sharing what I felt comfortable and ready to share.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Well, you it sounds like you would do a lot
of this by yourself, Yes, therapist, coach, did you have someone?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No? So I No, so I had Again, I was
doing a lot of reading, and I also read.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
A lot of classic literature.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Believe it or not, I was gravitating toward these narratives
that had these same kind of overcomer female protagonists who
were coming out of their struggles, and I was drawing
so much.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Encouragement from that.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
I was, you know, drawing encouragement from talking to other
survivors of physical violence and seeing them make progress.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Also and being online. Well this was before online, but
I do that now. Okay, So but even back then,
how was I? You know?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I was doing that. I was doing those things. And
you know, over the years, I've my husband has had
a couple of really good therapists, and I've gone with them.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
But I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Every time I went to therapy, the therapists kind of
shook their head like you seem to have all the
skills you need.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And then I started to say, well, what the heck
happens at therapy?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I thought part of it is just coming and being
like waw, let me tell someone everything other than my
journal or.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
God, this this is all the ugly.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
And you know, people therapist after therapists would just say
to me, you have the skills. You know, they'd seen
me one or two times and then they would be like,
you're good. And that just to me was mind blowing.
So I think that just drove me harder to be like, Okay,
keep doing what you're doing, keep being a good you know,
advocate for.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Your in defensive therapists. It's not just about that, right, Oh,
there's a lot of other things that go on, yes,
but all right, let me just remind everyone I'm speaking
with Jennifer de Bellis. So you obviously are not only
very empathic and compassionate, but you are like you exude
(18:58):
this what is it? This rank, this this warrior spirit?
Obviously it comes through How did you get to this
point or when did you get to this point, Jennifer
where you're like, Okay, I want to help others, maybe
I can help others. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I've always been that way so well.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
With this in this context specifically, I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Oh so okay, So aside from all those things in
my younger years, now fast forward, I go back to
college to train as a writer and to teach at
the college level. And I'm still in a smaller capacity
ministering to people and coaching different young adults who I
go to college with.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
When you said coaching, do you mean sports and sports?
Oh no, no, no, no, life coaching.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Coaching clients through where people want to do one on one,
you know, self help sessions like Okay, tell me, walk
me through how to deal with anger, walk me through
how to deal with you know.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
So I would do these and a very science fact.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I'm very into reading scholarly literature and backing everything up
with science and what the industry standards are. I'm not
trying to.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Say chuck it all up.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And I do also encourage people to go to their
therapists and I help them come up with the right
types of questions and things maybe to focus on with
their therapist.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So I'm kind of like a companion to a few
people over the years.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
But aside from that, and I was trying to get
out of that because I was trying to build a
totally different area of my life. So now fast forward,
my first book comes out, which is my coming of
age Stories. There's a lot of physical violence in this book,
and there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Overcoming of it.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And I am out touring with a book, and every
time I would share any of the work from that
particular or those topics, young women will come up to
me after the readings and say all these very complimentary things.
Oh my god, I can't believe you got through that.
Oh my god, Really you seem so confident, you got
your crap together. And it just, you know, the back
(21:10):
of my head. I just kept walking away from these
experiences almost broken hearted, thinking, Wow, there are all of
these women who their lives are just starting, and they're
carrying around.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
So much heavy baggage.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
They're not living, they're not even living in a quarter
of their potential because they're weighted down and don't know
how to cut themselves free from all this trauma.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
And so it kind of again, I'm meditating on it.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
I go to a reading, I have an experience, and
I come back from that experience and I'm like, I
have to write the book.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I have to write the book.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Like it was just at that moment where I was like,
I wish I had a book to get this teenager
who had just told me she just literally that day
came out of the hospital after she tried to kill
herself a third time, and she's showing me very real scars,
and she you knew how to cut herself the right
way too, And so I'm looking at it, going, God,
thank god you didn't succeed. But as her grandma's pulling
her out of this reading, I'm going, oh my god,
I wish I had a book. I could just put
(22:08):
it in her hands. I had nothing, just a few words,
and I went home and I said, I'd got to
write the book.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And that was the first What was that book in
the sense, what did you want to say to that
young girl?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Well, first of all, that she's not alone, that she's
not crazy for all the things that she's struggling with
and doesn't know how to deal with them and doesn't
know how to get past them, that those are all
very normal things, and that there is a way, there
is a way out, not only to get beyond those
struggles and to loose the grip of that trauma, but
(22:46):
there's a way to live with happiness, a fulfilling life
where you feel like you are thriving within your purpose
and living confidently and more equipped to when other things arise.
In your life, because you don't get through trauma and
then never experience trauma again. It's not all life works.
And so I wanted to give young girls like her
(23:07):
a pocket companion that had all kinds of things I
wished I had had when I was first overwhelmed with
my trauma and didn't know how to deal with it. So,
you know, it's a lot of different things. It's the
information that they need, it's the strategies that they need.
It's this self guided monthly journaling thing where you're going
(23:29):
back and investing in yourself and changing your perspective on
things and figuring out what your triggers really are because
a lot of times we don't understand what the triggers are,
and we have to with a lot of different guided approaches,
whether it's working with a therapist, working with your counselor
at school, or a trusted group you know, support group,
(23:50):
or a trusted friend or family member, or a coach
or somebody else where you know, in all these other
self help strategies, any combination of these things, sometimes all
of them are necessary in order for you to be
able to tap into what are these triggers? How do
I deal with the things that I need to deal with,
cut myself completely free from the things I don't need
(24:11):
to deal with. Because a lot of times survivors of
trauma hold on to the labels of the experience, and
then they think those labels are what identify them and.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
No labels like like what abuse?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Oh yeah, like yeah, like abuse, like like victim.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You know, uh, there's a lot, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Even the label survivor like suggests that you have you
have endured something. And you know, there's all types of
you know, labels, other labels too, where the guilt and
chap comes in. You're the troublemaker, You're the one who.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Asked for it.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
All the different labels that come in you. Why does
this keep happening to you? Because you're an idiot, you know.
So when I say labels, it's a very complicated thing.
And sometimes we think that those labels are what identify us,
but really they do shape our character. But we can
let go of those things and live a life free
(25:06):
of them because they don't they don't have a place
in our life. There's never a place in your life
where you have to walk around and say, I'm a loser,
I'm an idiot. I'm a repeat victim all those things
and you add them all up into the same sentence,
and you know, talk about overwhelming. Why get out of
bed in the morning. That's depressing, right right?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, I mean as you're enumerating all these aspects and
elements of this process, of this journey in and of
itself is overwhelming. I mean there's so many things. Yes,
you talked about, So all right, as we kind of
wind down here, what what are you doing now? How
are you working? Who are you working with?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You know, my book Where Your Sister Cut Yourself Free
came out in a second edition, which I'm really excited
that I get a seconds on it.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
My publisher, Library Tales Publishing.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Partnered with this distribution partnership with Simon and Schuster, and
they went through the catalog and they picked my book
as a book that they believed didn't get its fair
chance because it came out during the pandemic. So this
is going on, and I'm also at the same time
developing this podcast series, Restore Your Inner Warrior, which is
a broader range of just dealing with trauma. So I'm
(26:24):
trying to move beyond just this niche of just dealing
with people who are overcoming abuse and types of physical
violence trauma to say, we all have different points of trauma,
and some of the struggles are very similar. And everywhere
I was going to speak also, they were asking me
(26:44):
to censor this, you know the talk. Can you not
use those words? Can you just talk about it on
a broader scale. But I started thinking about, you know
what we rally, we really need people to talk about
it on a larger scale. So that's when I started saying,
let me incorporate a lot of these principles into a
broader approach to dealing with overcoming trauma and re establishing
(27:10):
or for the very first time, some people are building
their self esteem and confidence. And so that's what I'm
doing right now, is I am trying to come up
with literature in the form of self help books and
also this podcast series because a lot of my readers
don't want to sit down and read, They want to
just pop in their buds and walk around. And I
(27:32):
so that's what I'm doing right now as I'm developing
these broader messages.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Now is the podcast series? Is it one where you're
interviewing people or is it you solo or both?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's both. I just started it.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I just got through my first four weeks, and you know,
the first few weeks was really me trying to get
through the different parts of the second self help book
that I'm working on, Rectore or Your Inner Warrior, and
it felt more scripted. But you know, once you commit
to something, you're like follow it through and then learn
from it. So again I'm learning from like, Okay, don't
(28:10):
have to get so deep into one episode. You can
split it into three. But you know, I'm working on that.
I have a couple of guests who I want to
bring on. I actually want to do a couple of
book club types of things. So I have a book
club that's going to come on and do a Q
and A with me. So I'm gonna do a whole
bunch of things because you know, I want I want
(28:30):
to experiment with what listeners will respond to and maybe
don't respond to all of them.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Finally, here, if I was to ask you, like, what
your mission is, what would you say that is? How
would you respond?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Hmm?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So my mission is to really help people see that
they hold the power to restore that inner warrior. They
hold the power, and however they bring in the help.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what that help looks like.
We're not created to be an isolation. So find community,
find that outside support. Whatever that system looks like for you,
(29:11):
you have to create it. Also, there's no one formula
that that you can just plug yourself into and say, okay,
this works. So my really mission is to be one
of the outlets that is a safe space for all
types of survivors of trauma to come and find community,
to find that support, to share their own stories so
(29:33):
that they also feel heard, receive that compassion that we
all crave. We all crave that compassion when you meet
people who don't only speak your language, but they speak
your dialect.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And that's what.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So that's the type of community that I am trying
to cultivate. And you know, so I think maybe I
answered in a roundabout way. My mission is wrapping all
of these things up into one.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I love it, Love it Jennifer to us, how do
people reach you and learn more about your books and
your podcast series and what you have going on. It's
the best way.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So two ways.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
So my website Jennifer devellis and that's j E N
I F E R D E b E L l
I S dot com or Restore your Inner Warrior dot com.
And that's the same name as the podcast Restore Your
Inner Warrior, which is available in audio and video on
every streaming platform that there is out there.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So those are the two best ways to find information, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
We'll have all that link up here at the show
notes page at the Trauma Theapist podcast dot com. Jennifer,
You're awesome. Love to have you back at later date,
so inspiring. Thank you for being here, Thank you for
having me all right, Take care mean too.
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