September 2, 2025 • 29 mins
Stephanie McAuliffe speaks, writes and teaches on our human condition. She brings awareness to the impact of our internalized trauma, our patterns, and how we heal. She’s found incredible transformation in her own journey through healing sexual abuse, and more recently healed her relationship with God via healing breast cancer.
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Podcast: Http://HealThriveDreamPodcast.com/blog
Loved this episode? Leave us a comment below.
Website: https://wayofthediamondwarrior.com/
Connect with Stephanie:
https://www.instagram.com/stephaniebmcauliffe/
https://www.facebook.com/WayoftheDiamondWarriorwithStephanieBMcAuliffe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniebmcauliffe
https://youtube.com/@UCvfMmfaqAa12MGX88jh29Ag
Join our supportive group community:
Https://HealingFromTraumaTogether.com/
www.facebook.com/groups/healthrivedream
Connect with me:
Gmail: healthrivedream@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrivedream_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healthrivedream
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@traumarecoveryexpert
Twitter: https://twitter.com/healthrivedream
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenrobinson2022/
Website: Https://HealThriveDream.com/
Podcast: Http://HealThriveDreamPodcast.com/blog
Loved this episode? Leave us a comment below.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Heal Thrived Dream Podcast, where trauma survivors
become healthy thrivers. Each month will feature a theme in
the trauma recovery and empowerment field to promote your recovery,
healing and learning how to build dreams. Here's your host,
Karen Robinson, transformational coach and therapist.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the Healed Thrived Dream Podcast. My guest today
is Stephanie McCallum. Stephanie speaks, rites, and teaches on our
human condition. She brings awareness to the impact of our
internalized trauma, our patterns in how we heal. She's found
(00:42):
incredible transformation in her own journey through healing sexual abuse
and more recently healed her relationship with God. Feel a
healing breast cancer. That's pretty powerful. Stephanie, Welcome to my
pot cats.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Awesome. I am thrilled to have you for anyone listening
that doesn't know. Stephanie was one of my guest expert
speakers on my last summit Finding Faith after Religious Trauma,
and so today we're meeting again to chat with folks.
She's here to share a part of her story and
(01:25):
also to promote a new it's not exactly new program.
It's the second time she's offering it, but she's shared
with me offline that it's even better this time around.
So that's really cool. So Stephanie, tell me a little
bit about how you grew up and what were the
types of trauma that you experienced during your young adult
(01:48):
life or sorry, your young childhood before your young adult life.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I was raised as a good wasp the true trappings
of the white middle class family, where we didn't talk
about things, We numbed our feelings, and it was like
this bubble got created around us because nobody could see
in through the walls of the invisible bubble into what
(02:17):
was really happening under our roof. Now, I know you're
familiar with aces the adverse childhood experiences, and of the
ten that were in the original Kaiser Premedente CDC survey
that was done, I experienced seven of them. And it
(02:37):
is said that if you experience and everyone experiences trauma.
We have bullies, we have things that happened to us,
and so there's the little teas and the big teas,
and it's not to qualify or judge any of them.
And yet sexual abuse, alcoholism, silencing, emotional abuse, of moving
(03:01):
a lot, not feeling like I had any roots were
the basis the foundation that I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
The seven says a lot. Yeah, most of my clients
tend to be in the seven and eight range. And
I'm not proud to say because I didn't. It's not
a test you want a high score on because you
don't win anything. But I actually scored a ten out
(03:32):
of ten, and when I found that out, I felt
even more traumatized by having such a high score. Did
you feel that way when you got your score? Did it?
What did it mean for you? Did it validate you
in any way?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
It did? It was validating in a way of I'm
not as I'm going to swear, fucked up as I
think I am. Because there's so many there's this is
why I feel, part of why I feel the way
I do. And it also gave me insight into like
why I have why I developed high blood pressure, And
(04:09):
it's fascinating to me that the beta blocker I take
is also used to for trauma and so it's all connected.
And this is when when I found the ASIST study
years and years ago, I think It was when I
actually first started really diving into my own personal journey
(04:30):
and of really deciding to heal because I didn't want
to feel the way I felt permit so many years anymore.
And I started to see how the pieces and parts
fit together and that it wasn't that things happened to me.
I decided I wanted to transform the story and get healthy,
(04:50):
not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually as well.
So it was validating in a sense in that, oh,
this is where this comes from. Now I get to
make a choice of how I want to move forward.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yes, So for those listening, in case you missed it,
we're talking about the ACES. It's ACE. It stands for
Adverse Childhood Experiences and it's a test that you can
find online. However, I do recommend that you be mindful
of when you take it, where you take it, make
(05:29):
sure you have a support person nearby to talk with
in case it throws you for a loop like it
did me. And so Stephanie, before we talk about your
healing journey, which is what I love focusing on because
I think that inspires people and gives them hope out
of the traumas you experience, which one if you're able
(05:50):
or to really have the most impact on you, would
you say.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
The silencing of people in the household knew what was
happening to me and knew what had happened to me,
and the answers were, we don't talk about these things,
didn't want to acknowledge it. And so the feelings of
abandonment of I'm living in this household with these people
(06:16):
and they're supposed to be my family and protecting me.
It's one of the things we grow up with, expecting
that our parents will protect us. And yet my parents
had divorced when I was six or seven, and the
people that I was living with, I now see, we're
living in their own trauma and didn't feel safe enough
(06:39):
to protect me because they couldn't protect themselves. And yet
the whole thing about really feeling like I was living
on an island by myself and completely isolated, I think
was one of the biggest things, the biggest impact, because
(07:00):
when we can't speak about things, when it's not acknowledged,
all that energy goes inside, yeah, and we kind of
it's almost like right, it festers. It's like we bury
ourselves and we build layer upon layer upon layer upon layer,
and it can sometimes get to the point where personally,
for me, I shut off all of my feelings because
(07:23):
it wasn't safe to feel what was coming up for me,
and so I decided I'm going to build a career.
I worked on Wall Street for twenty seven years. It
was very successful. And yet if you asked me how
I wanted to feel versus how I felt, which are
two very different things, I couldn't answer that question. And yet,
(07:47):
when I was rising through the ranks on Wall Street
in my corporate job, I thought I had the world
in my hands because I was controlling everything around me,
which is the old trauma and fear response. So it's
fascinating to see now how it all tied together. And
yet back then, where I thought, like I said, I
(08:08):
was on top of the mountain, I had so little awareness,
and so really it was the biggest impact as a
child was the lack of acknowledgment. It wasn't the acts
of sexual abuse were traumatic, and I think it was
the environment in which I lived was even more traumatic
(08:30):
than the actual sexual abuse.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I am not at all surprised, and you are not
the first person to say that it's one thing to
go through abuse or trauma or anything that's adversive or
hurts us. Then if we don't have a place to
land afterwards where we're comforted, nurtured, given permission to use
(08:56):
our voice, that is really important. Bus So thank you
for sharing that. I think that will really resonate with
our listeners who luckily experience something similar.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And it took me a long time to get to
this point. Excuse me. Yeah, it's like I didn't have
the awareness overnight. It's been through looking at the pieces
and parts and healing through and working through those five
aspects of healing that I've gotten to this point where
I can see how what I call the spider web,
and I can see the connections.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yes, it's a journey, and awareness is the first step.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It is absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, So what did you decide to do for work
after leaving Wall Street? Well?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I left Wall Street a year after my divorce happened,
and all of a sudden, I was in this space
of what do I what do I do with myself?
I really I didn't know because my work and my
days were so regimented by going to work and working
fourteen hour days and coming home and trying to keep
(10:10):
my alcoholic husband sober, and all the projects and all
the things I created to not pay attention to myself.
All of a sudden I had this space of You've
got nothing but you. So I went deep into my
own healing journey and then wrote my first book because
I got the download, You're going to write a book,
(10:31):
And so that was the message in the bottle, finding
hope and piece and it's the chaos a living with
an alcoholic. And I thought my world was going to
be helping families of alcoholics, and yet I saw that
a lot of them don't think they need help and
don't want it because if I could just get the
other person to stop drinking, everything will be perfect. Well,
(10:53):
we know that just because we're not drinking doesn't mean
we're not still in the isms, and we need probably
just as much help as the alcoholic or the addict does.
Then I continued, I started getting into energy healing, and
there was a catalyst moment for me where in New Jersey,
(11:14):
where I was living at the time, they had something
called Jelcon and it was a combined day of meetings
between AA and alan On and I went to an
AA meeting because I had never been to one, and
I heard this man tell a story of how when
he was a teenager, his father made him do Heroin
with him, which is horrible. And then I led an
(11:39):
ACOA adult Children of Alcoholics meeting and this same man
came in and said the same story. And it was
then that I realized how attached we are to our stories,
and how attached I had been to my own. And
so it brought a whole new level of healing and
I entered into energy work. I am now a Holy
(12:01):
Fire three crooner Reiki master. I've studied with healers around
the world, and I like to say energy healing completed
the sentence, and that is meant to be a metaphor
like I had done the therapy, I had done the
twelve step in the journaling and a lot of other work.
And now the people that I work with have done
(12:24):
that same similar path. There's a lot of great resources
that are out there for people just beginning their healing journey,
people like you, your group going to therapy, going to
ellen On or AA or ACOA is great. There's a
lot of great books out there, and yet we can
get to a point where we still feel like we're
(12:46):
hitting that wall. What do I do now? Something's missing,
something is missing. And those are the people that I
work with, because now we're going to get into the energy,
all the layers that we've buried, and we're going to
clear them. And because some of it has inherited trauma,
there's a lot of scientific studies out there showing how
(13:09):
trauma gets passed down through our mother and father biological nigenics. Yeah,
and so people who are like really ready to all right,
I've done all this other work. I'm tired of telling
the story. Now let's complete this last part.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yes, yes, I know you talk about five pillars. I
talk about six pillars plus because I think the financial
piece it's not a pillar per se, but financial healing
is needed for a lot of survivors. But the energetic
pillar is the last pillar I added on to my
(13:52):
treatment for myself and the treatment pillars I'm presenting to
my community. And it's been so excited to explore it
because it was something that was not talked about a
lot in any of the classes and programs I studied,
with the exception of tapping the EFT programming. I've always
(14:16):
loved that and I tried to figure out why is
this working? And I was like, Okay, it's the vibration,
it's the rhythm, you know. It's just so interesting how
energy works, like how you feel it in different ways,
the frequencies. So I love that you have a niche
area in this because I think you're really good at it.
(14:37):
Is my intuition. We haven't worked together yet, that's my intuition.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It's fascinating and this is something that I truly honor
these gifts I've been given because when I can work
with people who think that they're going to be stuck
with something for the rest of their lives, and through
our work together we can clear the energetic ties, we
can clear the heaviness that they've carried, and they're finally free.
(15:08):
It's amazing. I'm And the thing is is, I think
energy work scares people in some ways, and yet an
idea is energy, a thought is energy. Everything is energy,
(15:30):
and so there are people that misuse it. But there's
people that misuse money, there's people that misuse their power,
and so it's really connecting with the people that we
feel safe with, and sometimes we have to get to
the level of safety within ourselves to open ourselves up
to this. I know I did, and a lot of
(15:51):
my clients do as well. And yet there is something
about honoring these gifts and the intuitive, like the visions
that I get of we're clearing sometimes past life energy,
the generational trauma that's passed down as well, the layers
of things. I worked with someone a few weeks ago,
(16:14):
and as soon as we started our session, I heard
I don't deserve this, and so I said to her,
what does this mean? And so we connected with the
age where it began. We cleared the energy, we created
a new belief for her. And so what I do
isn't just energy work. It's also practical tools that people
(16:34):
can take away with them, because I think you need both,
and you spoke about awareness, and awareness is the beginning
of this. If we're just going and we can go
have a massage and feel a little bit better. And
yet if we don't know what it is that we're clearing,
we're apt to repeat cycles. And if we're just talking
(16:58):
about things and not clear the energy, well we're still
carrying the energy. So again we're apt to repeat cycles.
And so I love the fact that this is an
alchemy a both the practical and the mystical.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh, that's such a nice way to put it.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah, and to finally clear. And the thing is is
if you don't want to let go of a story,
doesn't matter the gifts that I've been given. It's really
all within your power and yeah, and you get to
open yourself up to okay. And sometimes it comes in layers,
(17:39):
just like healing. I may be ready to let go
of a certain part, but I may still need to
express a lot of anger and rage and then I
can get down exactly right. And so it's almost it's like,
you know, the healing process brings in the five layers
or areas of grief, and think there's probably more than five.
(18:02):
And yet healing a situation in company that encompasses the
five layers of grief as well as the five aspects,
like I said, of the physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Oh, my six month is relational color nice. Yeah, And
it's not always my favorite part to work on, but
it's also I guess I have and sometimes I like
to use it. Sometimes I'm like, oh, it takes a
lot of energy for the provider doing any type of
(18:38):
relationship work. Do you ever do energy healing for couples
or mother daughter, father son, father daughter, any kind of
family suffer. Do you just work with individuals.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I have done work with family because it's very interesting.
It's just like when we go into a job, it
is a Petri dish of all of our unhealed childhood wounds. Yes,
and couples are the same thing. And when I was
living in Utahi, worked with a husband and wife, and
through our work together we saw it's like, these are
(19:14):
the things that she brought and these are the things
that he brought, and they were catalysts for each other
because we will get in relationship with people to heal
our childhood wounds right, and we can either choose to
or choose not to. With my first husband, I chose
not to. I felt like I'm done, I'm out of there.
(19:35):
I don't have to deal with this anymore. And yet
I married another alcoholic and I like to say that
being married to him with him was one of my
greatest gifts because it opened me up to the things
that I think I was finally ready to heal, including
a lot of the childhood stuff. It opened the door
(19:56):
and I chose to step through it. So yes, I
do work with with couples, not so much kids because
that I would work with adults. But when you get
getting into teenagers, I haven't entered that realm yet.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, I like the word yet well.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And it would be where the parent and child would
both need to be in agreement that they want to heal.
This because my mother sent me to therapy when I
was in junior high school and I sat in the
guy's office and I smoked cigarettes because I wanted I
wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn't feel supported.
And I was being sexually abused by my stepbrother and
(20:40):
here I was sitting in an office with a man.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It was a no on so many levels. And so
this is where even with couples or any two people
coming together need to want to honestly do the work.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yes, yeah, one thousand percent agree. Now for me, I
notice it takes more of my personal energy energy when
I do couples or family work. Do you feel that
as well or not so much?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
No, not anymore, because you have tricks I do. I
know how to protect my energy. I know that there
are certain practices that I put into place before I
even begin a session with people, and I set in
time even when I go to like Sunday night, I
(21:35):
went to a sound healing I set the intention that
all the energy cleared by everyone transcends up so it
doesn't get attached to anybody, and that all the space
is created to be filled with golden healing light because
nature does not like a vacuum. And I know that
the energy that's flowing through me is flowing through me.
(21:57):
I am a channel, I'm a catalyst for it. It's
I'm not holding on to it. It's so there's a
number of things that I do so that I'm clear
beforehand and clear. I still clear myself afterwards as well,
and I have a nightly practice where I clear my
energy field because we're picking.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Up energy all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I have learned
how to clear as I you know, this is my
twenty six year being a therapist, so I have worked
more on clearing it, and I limit on how many
I do because I think it's just a preference thing too.
It's not just energetic, because it's hard to what I
(22:41):
find challenging and you address this already is you know,
I've got the big Joe and the little Joe, I
got the big Lisa and the little Lisa in the room,
So it's not two people that I'm working with. It's
for yeah, you know, and making sure all four people
are getting their needs met and making a healing journey
(23:04):
for them. And like you also said, everybody is going
to be willing to heal, you know, there's usually one
little bugger that's being resisted to healing. Right, That's kind
of what I what I find challenging.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And I think also that those of us who experience trauma,
many of us are empathetic, and we were raised in
toxic codependency, like if I can make this right, You're
going to be okay, and then I'm going to be okay,
and so breaking that cycle that I can offer many,
(23:39):
many gifts and many tools to these people, and yet
it's them making the choice. So it's not my responsibility.
It's been a mantra that I have been saying for many,
many years.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And it's a good one. That's exactly right. We are
not in control. We're in charge of other people's change.
We offer tools in guidance and then it's really up
to them. Absolutely, that's absolutely right. Yeah, So let's transition
(24:16):
to your program. It sounds wonderful. Can you tell us
the name, how long it is, and what people can
expect if they choose to work with you.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yes. So, the then second round, or the next round
of the Energy of Boundaries is beginning in late September.
It is an eight week program where new material gets
dropped every week. So there are there's recorded training in
pdf sheets, worksheets, as well as once a week we
(24:50):
gather to review the teaching to go deeper into some
new teaching. There's Q and A, and there's also healing
via either a guided meditation, there's energy healing, there's processes.
And many of us who experience trauma, well most of us,
(25:10):
first of all, were never taught how to create boundaries.
And the ones that we did create where I'm going
to create a hardshell around me, so you can't get
to me, and yet it blocks us off from the
thing that we really want connection exactly. And so this
program takes each of the students through their own journey
(25:33):
of a specific situation that they choose and they don't
have to choose it from the mind. There's a process
that we do. I think it's week two to connect
with what does your higher self? What does your soul
really want you to work on right now? And we
go deep into that specific situation to see the spiderweb
(25:55):
of what was created, why it was created, what are
the other additional connections, and then heal the energy of
it and transform the story. So there is the awareness,
there is the energy healing. There's healing on all levels
because when we're clear of that, and there's a lot
(26:17):
of tools as well that people take away with them,
so you can go through this process as many times
as you want to, and yet it's going deep in
one situation so that you can clear it and transform
it and be free, because I like to say that
the body only has a finite amount of space, and
(26:39):
to bring in what we want, we need to clear
out the old of what we've been carrying. So this
is a personal transformation journey soup to nuts, focusing on
what was the energy around some of the boundaries you've created.
And then when we've healed this old story and we're
(27:03):
emanating from the inside out, the old way of creating
boundaries isn't necessary anymore. It's an amazing eight weeks and
I did the work a few weeks ahead of the
stud and it's work that I've done and yet I
continue to do the work and it brought new insights
(27:25):
for me as well. So this is where you know
heal or heal thyself and I am walking along with
the students. And this is an invitation for anyone who
wants to really learn how to create healthy and effective
boundaries and clear the energy of the old.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
It's so beautiful. I think that's amazing. And do you
have a link ready yet for this class?
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I do, and for right now for folks who want
to connect with me, yes, I do, and I'll give
it to you so it'll be in the show notes. Awesome,
and people can also connect with me via my website,
which is Way of the Diamond Warrior.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Way of the Diamond Warrior. Yes, we will also have
that link to her website and her show notes as
well as the name of her book, so people can
check that out as well. Is there anything else that
you want to share before I wrap up?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
What's coming through is the importance of forgiveness, and mostly
for forgiving ourselves for trying to make impossible situations work.
Forgiveness was so important in my healing journey, and I
(28:55):
mean there could be a whole other conversation, so I'll
leave it at that. But really, it's self forgiveness for
being human.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I think that's beautiful. What a way to end
it self forgiveness. It sounds like it would be easier
than forgiving others, but I'm not so sure that it's easy.
So please do the work. Please reach out to Stephanie
to see if she can be of service for you.
(29:26):
She's beautiful inside and out. I know her from a
best certification class we're doing together, so highly recommend her.
Thank you all for listening today, and thank you Stephanie
for being here.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Thank you, thank you for listening in today. Please join
us next week, same day and time. Also, I would
love for you to check out my website, Heal thrivedream
dot com
Welcome to the Heal Thrived Dream Podcast, where trauma survivors
become healthy thrivers. Each month will feature a theme in
the trauma recovery and empowerment field to promote your recovery,
healing and learning how to build dreams. Here's your host,
Karen Robinson, transformational coach and therapist.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the Healed Thrived Dream Podcast. My guest today
is Stephanie McCallum. Stephanie speaks, rites, and teaches on our
human condition. She brings awareness to the impact of our
internalized trauma, our patterns in how we heal. She's found
(00:42):
incredible transformation in her own journey through healing sexual abuse
and more recently healed her relationship with God. Feel a
healing breast cancer. That's pretty powerful. Stephanie, Welcome to my
pot cats.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Awesome. I am thrilled to have you for anyone listening
that doesn't know. Stephanie was one of my guest expert
speakers on my last summit Finding Faith after Religious Trauma,
and so today we're meeting again to chat with folks.
She's here to share a part of her story and
(01:25):
also to promote a new it's not exactly new program.
It's the second time she's offering it, but she's shared
with me offline that it's even better this time around.
So that's really cool. So Stephanie, tell me a little
bit about how you grew up and what were the
types of trauma that you experienced during your young adult
(01:48):
life or sorry, your young childhood before your young adult life.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I was raised as a good wasp the true trappings
of the white middle class family, where we didn't talk
about things, We numbed our feelings, and it was like
this bubble got created around us because nobody could see
in through the walls of the invisible bubble into what
(02:17):
was really happening under our roof. Now, I know you're
familiar with aces the adverse childhood experiences, and of the
ten that were in the original Kaiser Premedente CDC survey
that was done, I experienced seven of them. And it
(02:37):
is said that if you experience and everyone experiences trauma.
We have bullies, we have things that happened to us,
and so there's the little teas and the big teas,
and it's not to qualify or judge any of them.
And yet sexual abuse, alcoholism, silencing, emotional abuse, of moving
(03:01):
a lot, not feeling like I had any roots were
the basis the foundation that I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
The seven says a lot. Yeah, most of my clients
tend to be in the seven and eight range. And
I'm not proud to say because I didn't. It's not
a test you want a high score on because you
don't win anything. But I actually scored a ten out
(03:32):
of ten, and when I found that out, I felt
even more traumatized by having such a high score. Did
you feel that way when you got your score? Did it?
What did it mean for you? Did it validate you
in any way?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
It did? It was validating in a way of I'm
not as I'm going to swear, fucked up as I
think I am. Because there's so many there's this is
why I feel, part of why I feel the way
I do. And it also gave me insight into like
why I have why I developed high blood pressure, And
(04:09):
it's fascinating to me that the beta blocker I take
is also used to for trauma and so it's all connected.
And this is when when I found the ASIST study
years and years ago, I think It was when I
actually first started really diving into my own personal journey
(04:30):
and of really deciding to heal because I didn't want
to feel the way I felt permit so many years anymore.
And I started to see how the pieces and parts
fit together and that it wasn't that things happened to me.
I decided I wanted to transform the story and get healthy,
(04:50):
not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually as well.
So it was validating in a sense in that, oh,
this is where this comes from. Now I get to
make a choice of how I want to move forward.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yes, So for those listening, in case you missed it,
we're talking about the ACES. It's ACE. It stands for
Adverse Childhood Experiences and it's a test that you can
find online. However, I do recommend that you be mindful
of when you take it, where you take it, make
(05:29):
sure you have a support person nearby to talk with
in case it throws you for a loop like it
did me. And so Stephanie, before we talk about your
healing journey, which is what I love focusing on because
I think that inspires people and gives them hope out
of the traumas you experience, which one if you're able
(05:50):
or to really have the most impact on you, would
you say.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
The silencing of people in the household knew what was
happening to me and knew what had happened to me,
and the answers were, we don't talk about these things,
didn't want to acknowledge it. And so the feelings of
abandonment of I'm living in this household with these people
(06:16):
and they're supposed to be my family and protecting me.
It's one of the things we grow up with, expecting
that our parents will protect us. And yet my parents
had divorced when I was six or seven, and the
people that I was living with, I now see, we're
living in their own trauma and didn't feel safe enough
(06:39):
to protect me because they couldn't protect themselves. And yet
the whole thing about really feeling like I was living
on an island by myself and completely isolated, I think
was one of the biggest things, the biggest impact, because
(07:00):
when we can't speak about things, when it's not acknowledged,
all that energy goes inside, yeah, and we kind of
it's almost like right, it festers. It's like we bury
ourselves and we build layer upon layer upon layer upon layer,
and it can sometimes get to the point where personally,
for me, I shut off all of my feelings because
(07:23):
it wasn't safe to feel what was coming up for me,
and so I decided I'm going to build a career.
I worked on Wall Street for twenty seven years. It
was very successful. And yet if you asked me how
I wanted to feel versus how I felt, which are
two very different things, I couldn't answer that question. And yet,
(07:47):
when I was rising through the ranks on Wall Street
in my corporate job, I thought I had the world
in my hands because I was controlling everything around me,
which is the old trauma and fear response. So it's
fascinating to see now how it all tied together. And
yet back then, where I thought, like I said, I
(08:08):
was on top of the mountain, I had so little awareness,
and so really it was the biggest impact as a
child was the lack of acknowledgment. It wasn't the acts
of sexual abuse were traumatic, and I think it was
the environment in which I lived was even more traumatic
(08:30):
than the actual sexual abuse.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I am not at all surprised, and you are not
the first person to say that it's one thing to
go through abuse or trauma or anything that's adversive or
hurts us. Then if we don't have a place to
land afterwards where we're comforted, nurtured, given permission to use
(08:56):
our voice, that is really important. Bus So thank you
for sharing that. I think that will really resonate with
our listeners who luckily experience something similar.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And it took me a long time to get to
this point. Excuse me. Yeah, it's like I didn't have
the awareness overnight. It's been through looking at the pieces
and parts and healing through and working through those five
aspects of healing that I've gotten to this point where
I can see how what I call the spider web,
and I can see the connections.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yes, it's a journey, and awareness is the first step.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It is absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, So what did you decide to do for work
after leaving Wall Street? Well?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I left Wall Street a year after my divorce happened,
and all of a sudden, I was in this space
of what do I what do I do with myself?
I really I didn't know because my work and my
days were so regimented by going to work and working
fourteen hour days and coming home and trying to keep
(10:10):
my alcoholic husband sober, and all the projects and all
the things I created to not pay attention to myself.
All of a sudden I had this space of You've
got nothing but you. So I went deep into my
own healing journey and then wrote my first book because
I got the download, You're going to write a book,
(10:31):
And so that was the message in the bottle, finding
hope and piece and it's the chaos a living with
an alcoholic. And I thought my world was going to
be helping families of alcoholics, and yet I saw that
a lot of them don't think they need help and
don't want it because if I could just get the
other person to stop drinking, everything will be perfect. Well,
(10:53):
we know that just because we're not drinking doesn't mean
we're not still in the isms, and we need probably
just as much help as the alcoholic or the addict does.
Then I continued, I started getting into energy healing, and
there was a catalyst moment for me where in New Jersey,
(11:14):
where I was living at the time, they had something
called Jelcon and it was a combined day of meetings
between AA and alan On and I went to an
AA meeting because I had never been to one, and
I heard this man tell a story of how when
he was a teenager, his father made him do Heroin
with him, which is horrible. And then I led an
(11:39):
ACOA adult Children of Alcoholics meeting and this same man
came in and said the same story. And it was
then that I realized how attached we are to our stories,
and how attached I had been to my own. And
so it brought a whole new level of healing and
I entered into energy work. I am now a Holy
(12:01):
Fire three crooner Reiki master. I've studied with healers around
the world, and I like to say energy healing completed
the sentence, and that is meant to be a metaphor
like I had done the therapy, I had done the
twelve step in the journaling and a lot of other work.
And now the people that I work with have done
(12:24):
that same similar path. There's a lot of great resources
that are out there for people just beginning their healing journey,
people like you, your group going to therapy, going to
ellen On or AA or ACOA is great. There's a
lot of great books out there, and yet we can
get to a point where we still feel like we're
(12:46):
hitting that wall. What do I do now? Something's missing,
something is missing. And those are the people that I
work with, because now we're going to get into the energy,
all the layers that we've buried, and we're going to
clear them. And because some of it has inherited trauma,
there's a lot of scientific studies out there showing how
(13:09):
trauma gets passed down through our mother and father biological nigenics. Yeah,
and so people who are like really ready to all right,
I've done all this other work. I'm tired of telling
the story. Now let's complete this last part.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yes, yes, I know you talk about five pillars. I
talk about six pillars plus because I think the financial
piece it's not a pillar per se, but financial healing
is needed for a lot of survivors. But the energetic
pillar is the last pillar I added on to my
(13:52):
treatment for myself and the treatment pillars I'm presenting to
my community. And it's been so excited to explore it
because it was something that was not talked about a
lot in any of the classes and programs I studied,
with the exception of tapping the EFT programming. I've always
(14:16):
loved that and I tried to figure out why is
this working? And I was like, Okay, it's the vibration,
it's the rhythm, you know. It's just so interesting how
energy works, like how you feel it in different ways,
the frequencies. So I love that you have a niche
area in this because I think you're really good at it.
(14:37):
Is my intuition. We haven't worked together yet, that's my intuition.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It's fascinating and this is something that I truly honor
these gifts I've been given because when I can work
with people who think that they're going to be stuck
with something for the rest of their lives, and through
our work together we can clear the energetic ties, we
can clear the heaviness that they've carried, and they're finally free.
(15:08):
It's amazing. I'm And the thing is is, I think
energy work scares people in some ways, and yet an
idea is energy, a thought is energy. Everything is energy,
(15:30):
and so there are people that misuse it. But there's
people that misuse money, there's people that misuse their power,
and so it's really connecting with the people that we
feel safe with, and sometimes we have to get to
the level of safety within ourselves to open ourselves up
to this. I know I did, and a lot of
(15:51):
my clients do as well. And yet there is something
about honoring these gifts and the intuitive, like the visions
that I get of we're clearing sometimes past life energy,
the generational trauma that's passed down as well, the layers
of things. I worked with someone a few weeks ago,
(16:14):
and as soon as we started our session, I heard
I don't deserve this, and so I said to her,
what does this mean? And so we connected with the
age where it began. We cleared the energy, we created
a new belief for her. And so what I do
isn't just energy work. It's also practical tools that people
(16:34):
can take away with them, because I think you need both,
and you spoke about awareness, and awareness is the beginning
of this. If we're just going and we can go
have a massage and feel a little bit better. And
yet if we don't know what it is that we're clearing,
we're apt to repeat cycles. And if we're just talking
(16:58):
about things and not clear the energy, well we're still
carrying the energy. So again we're apt to repeat cycles.
And so I love the fact that this is an
alchemy a both the practical and the mystical.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh, that's such a nice way to put it.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah, and to finally clear. And the thing is is
if you don't want to let go of a story,
doesn't matter the gifts that I've been given. It's really
all within your power and yeah, and you get to
open yourself up to okay. And sometimes it comes in layers,
(17:39):
just like healing. I may be ready to let go
of a certain part, but I may still need to
express a lot of anger and rage and then I
can get down exactly right. And so it's almost it's like,
you know, the healing process brings in the five layers
or areas of grief, and think there's probably more than five.
(18:02):
And yet healing a situation in company that encompasses the
five layers of grief as well as the five aspects,
like I said, of the physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Oh, my six month is relational color nice. Yeah, And
it's not always my favorite part to work on, but
it's also I guess I have and sometimes I like
to use it. Sometimes I'm like, oh, it takes a
lot of energy for the provider doing any type of
(18:38):
relationship work. Do you ever do energy healing for couples
or mother daughter, father son, father daughter, any kind of
family suffer. Do you just work with individuals.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
I have done work with family because it's very interesting.
It's just like when we go into a job, it
is a Petri dish of all of our unhealed childhood wounds. Yes,
and couples are the same thing. And when I was
living in Utahi, worked with a husband and wife, and
through our work together we saw it's like, these are
(19:14):
the things that she brought and these are the things
that he brought, and they were catalysts for each other
because we will get in relationship with people to heal
our childhood wounds right, and we can either choose to
or choose not to. With my first husband, I chose
not to. I felt like I'm done, I'm out of there.
(19:35):
I don't have to deal with this anymore. And yet
I married another alcoholic and I like to say that
being married to him with him was one of my
greatest gifts because it opened me up to the things
that I think I was finally ready to heal, including
a lot of the childhood stuff. It opened the door
(19:56):
and I chose to step through it. So yes, I
do work with with couples, not so much kids because
that I would work with adults. But when you get
getting into teenagers, I haven't entered that realm yet.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, I like the word yet well.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And it would be where the parent and child would
both need to be in agreement that they want to heal.
This because my mother sent me to therapy when I
was in junior high school and I sat in the
guy's office and I smoked cigarettes because I wanted I
wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn't feel supported.
And I was being sexually abused by my stepbrother and
(20:40):
here I was sitting in an office with a man.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yes, it was.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It was a no on so many levels. And so
this is where even with couples or any two people
coming together need to want to honestly do the work.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yes, yeah, one thousand percent agree. Now for me, I
notice it takes more of my personal energy energy when
I do couples or family work. Do you feel that
as well or not so much?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
No, not anymore, because you have tricks I do. I
know how to protect my energy. I know that there
are certain practices that I put into place before I
even begin a session with people, and I set in
time even when I go to like Sunday night, I
(21:35):
went to a sound healing I set the intention that
all the energy cleared by everyone transcends up so it
doesn't get attached to anybody, and that all the space
is created to be filled with golden healing light because
nature does not like a vacuum. And I know that
the energy that's flowing through me is flowing through me.
(21:57):
I am a channel, I'm a catalyst for it. It's
I'm not holding on to it. It's so there's a
number of things that I do so that I'm clear
beforehand and clear. I still clear myself afterwards as well,
and I have a nightly practice where I clear my
energy field because we're picking.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Up energy all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I have learned
how to clear as I you know, this is my
twenty six year being a therapist, so I have worked
more on clearing it, and I limit on how many
I do because I think it's just a preference thing too.
It's not just energetic, because it's hard to what I
(22:41):
find challenging and you address this already is you know,
I've got the big Joe and the little Joe, I
got the big Lisa and the little Lisa in the room,
So it's not two people that I'm working with. It's
for yeah, you know, and making sure all four people
are getting their needs met and making a healing journey
(23:04):
for them. And like you also said, everybody is going
to be willing to heal, you know, there's usually one
little bugger that's being resisted to healing. Right, That's kind
of what I what I find challenging.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And I think also that those of us who experience trauma,
many of us are empathetic, and we were raised in
toxic codependency, like if I can make this right, You're
going to be okay, and then I'm going to be okay,
and so breaking that cycle that I can offer many,
(23:39):
many gifts and many tools to these people, and yet
it's them making the choice. So it's not my responsibility.
It's been a mantra that I have been saying for many,
many years.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And it's a good one. That's exactly right. We are
not in control. We're in charge of other people's change.
We offer tools in guidance and then it's really up
to them. Absolutely, that's absolutely right. Yeah, So let's transition
(24:16):
to your program. It sounds wonderful. Can you tell us
the name, how long it is, and what people can
expect if they choose to work with you.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yes. So, the then second round, or the next round
of the Energy of Boundaries is beginning in late September.
It is an eight week program where new material gets
dropped every week. So there are there's recorded training in
pdf sheets, worksheets, as well as once a week we
(24:50):
gather to review the teaching to go deeper into some
new teaching. There's Q and A, and there's also healing
via either a guided meditation, there's energy healing, there's processes.
And many of us who experience trauma, well most of us,
(25:10):
first of all, were never taught how to create boundaries.
And the ones that we did create where I'm going
to create a hardshell around me, so you can't get
to me, and yet it blocks us off from the
thing that we really want connection exactly. And so this
program takes each of the students through their own journey
(25:33):
of a specific situation that they choose and they don't
have to choose it from the mind. There's a process
that we do. I think it's week two to connect
with what does your higher self? What does your soul
really want you to work on right now? And we
go deep into that specific situation to see the spiderweb
(25:55):
of what was created, why it was created, what are
the other additional connections, and then heal the energy of
it and transform the story. So there is the awareness,
there is the energy healing. There's healing on all levels
because when we're clear of that, and there's a lot
(26:17):
of tools as well that people take away with them,
so you can go through this process as many times
as you want to, and yet it's going deep in
one situation so that you can clear it and transform
it and be free, because I like to say that
the body only has a finite amount of space, and
(26:39):
to bring in what we want, we need to clear
out the old of what we've been carrying. So this
is a personal transformation journey soup to nuts, focusing on
what was the energy around some of the boundaries you've created.
And then when we've healed this old story and we're
(27:03):
emanating from the inside out, the old way of creating
boundaries isn't necessary anymore. It's an amazing eight weeks and
I did the work a few weeks ahead of the
stud and it's work that I've done and yet I
continue to do the work and it brought new insights
(27:25):
for me as well. So this is where you know
heal or heal thyself and I am walking along with
the students. And this is an invitation for anyone who
wants to really learn how to create healthy and effective
boundaries and clear the energy of the old.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
It's so beautiful. I think that's amazing. And do you
have a link ready yet for this class?
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I do, and for right now for folks who want
to connect with me, yes, I do, and I'll give
it to you so it'll be in the show notes. Awesome,
and people can also connect with me via my website,
which is Way of the Diamond Warrior.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Way of the Diamond Warrior. Yes, we will also have
that link to her website and her show notes as
well as the name of her book, so people can
check that out as well. Is there anything else that
you want to share before I wrap up?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
What's coming through is the importance of forgiveness, and mostly
for forgiving ourselves for trying to make impossible situations work.
Forgiveness was so important in my healing journey, and I
(28:55):
mean there could be a whole other conversation, so I'll
leave it at that. But really, it's self forgiveness for
being human.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I think that's beautiful. What a way to end
it self forgiveness. It sounds like it would be easier
than forgiving others, but I'm not so sure that it's easy.
So please do the work. Please reach out to Stephanie
to see if she can be of service for you.
(29:26):
She's beautiful inside and out. I know her from a
best certification class we're doing together, so highly recommend her.
Thank you all for listening today, and thank you Stephanie
for being here.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Thank you, thank you for listening in today. Please join
us next week, same day and time. Also, I would
love for you to check out my website, Heal thrivedream
dot com
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