Guest post Nadia Charles Recovery and Trauma Coach
Over the past eight years, I’ve shared much of my personal story on this platform 📖, but there’s something about me that only very few people are aware of 🤫. A recent change in my life 🔄.
I’m a very private person, so when I share parts of my story, it’s meaningful to me 💌.
Sharing my story is a practice of vulnerability, transparency, and honesty 🌈. And hopefully, my words connect with someone out there who’s struggling 😔, who feels defeated and is ready to give up 🥺, someone who doesn’t know where to turn or what to do to make the pain stop 🛑.
Hopefully, my words offer some comfort 🤗, a modicum of inspiration 🌟 or hope 🕊️, a testament that even when it doesn’t feel like there’s anything worth living for, there is.
I share my story to show that I don’t have it all figured out.
That I’m still and always will be on my recovery journey 🚶♀️.
That this journey has ups and downs ⬆️⬇️, wins and challenges 🏅🚧, moments of joy 😄, and moments of defeat 😞, moments when I feel like I’m finally moving forward 🏞️, and moments when I feel like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s doing and questioning how in the world I can help anyone.
At the tail end of 2014, I got bit by the self-improvement bug. When I was studying life coaching, hypnotherapy, and aromatherapy, a classmate invited me to a personal development seminar by Peak Potentials (who’ve since rebranded) called “Millionaire Mind Intensive”.
It was a seminar designed to prime the brains of unsuspecting, desperate-to-change-their-lives individuals like me to buy the one program that would be the answer, their ticket to financial freedom.
This orgy of manipulation was done using NLP techniques, a highly effective psychological tool used to change behaviors.
As both a recipient of and trained in some basic NLP techniques, I find it to be intrusive and psychologically damaging when used in unethical ways, which in my opinion, is how much of the self-help gurus use it without regard for vulnerable populations such as those with pre-existing mental health issues stemming from trauma.
In fact, the more vulnerable you are to the one-size-fits-all, if-you’re-not-happy-you’re-just-not-trying-hard-enough messages, the more money 💵 they make of you. And the worse you feel about yourself, the tighter the hold they have on you becomes by continuing to offer you the next magic pill to feel better and achieve more.
Thousands of dollars and a Ch. 13 bankruptcy later, I’m still a fan of self-improvement, but I’ve also become wise as to how it can do more harm than good, especially to trauma survivors like myself.
I believe each of us has within us the power to change our circumstances, our beliefs, and our behaviors, but it can’t be done through willpower, quick fixes, or positive thinking 🧚♀️.
It has to be done with compassion 💖, empathy 🥰, kindness for ourselves, validation of our emotions, honor for our unique stories 📚, and patience 🕰️ when we don’t get it right the first, second, third, or fifteenth time.
I believe change is only possible through deep self-awareness 🤳, awareness of what hurts, where it hurts, how it hurts, and why it hurts 🤕.
Only then is personal accountability possible because if you don’t know why something is broken or how it got broken, you don’t know the right tool 🛠️ to use to fix it.
Once you’re equipped with the right tools, you can use them over and over and over again to recognize, resolve, reduce, remove, replace, or respond to any problem.
The right tools bring you into integrity with your authentic self, the self that’s been buried underneath all the hurt 🤕. Using the right tools, which only you can determine, you can align your life in the direction you want it to go 🏞️.
This is my trauma-informed formula for personal development, awareness + accountability + alignment.
There is no magic pill 🚫💊. There is no one perfect solution. Because you are unique, and so is your story. You get to design your solution and implement the tools that support how you want to be in the world 🌍. You get to decide what and who feels safe. You get to decide what you want your life to look like and how you want to live it.
Deep breath 🌬️.
Healing is a journey. It takes time ⏳.
It took time for your wounds to form, and it will take time to heal them.
I know this deep down, and yet, I still have to be reminded when I get down and question my existence.
One of those times was after I quit my job, sold my house, and sought refuge in Dominica. I had been in an emotional crisis but wasn’t giving it the attention it duly deserved. So, as I stood in the middle of my bedroom, sobbing, a mug of tea trembling in my hand, shouting, “What’s wrong with me?” a gentle hand reached up, set the mug down, and wrapped me in a strong embrace, repeating, “There’s nothing wrong with you baby.”
That was my soon-to-be husband comforting me, telling me I would be ok, that there was nothing wrong with me, holding me as my emotions spilled out.
In the Summer of 2021, I traveled to Dominica for a much-needed time out 🏖️.
I helped my mother manage her COVID-19 quarantine-approved guesthouse, checking guests in and out, making testing arrangements, and cleaning rooms while also doing a lot of soul-searching about what my future held.
It was the last 2 full weeks of my month-long trip when a skinny young man arrived for his 5-day quarantine stay. Noting his small frame and without thinking whether or not it was appropriate, I asked him if he was hungry, lol, to which he responded, yes. Thus began our romance 💘.
In a surprise twist of fate, during another dark period of my life, when I had all but given up, believing that I sucked at life and would never find true love, and in fact, had resigned myself to being single, love blossomed at an unexpected time with an unexpected person who wasn’t even the gender I was normally attracted to 💕.
Falling in love was totally unexpected for many reasons. I had been single for 5 years, and while it was not unusual for me to go years between relationships, I did want to have someone; I just struggled in relationships, mentally and emotionally.
As a survivor of childhood trauma, its echoes had significantly impacted my self-image, self-confidence, and self-worth, and as a lesbian, I felt inadequate, incompetent, and inexperienced.
So, there I was, not at my ideal weight, wondering if I was gay, bi, or asexual, completely aloof to the flirtation of this man 6 years my junior. Life sparked again.
I married my husband, Brady Thomas, on November 25, 2022 💍.
The stars aligned to make our meeting possible. Never in a million years would I have imagined meeting someone who so completely supports and loves me unconditionally. Someone whom I feel safe with to make mistakes and fall apart and who’s just as committed to trauma-informed personal growth as I am.
This is my message to you. You are stronger than you think 💪, more worthy than you believe, and even in your darkest moments, know that there is hope 🕊️.
You are not broken or in need of fixing. Your journey is not about finding a cure but about nurturing a relationship with yourself, understanding your wounds, and using the tools that work best for you to move toward healing.
If you’re trapped in a self-shaming sea of self-improvement, know that you are enough. You have always been enough. It’s not about becoming more; it’s about peeling back the layers of trauma and pain to reveal the authentic, powerful, resilient you 👤.
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