My Story

 

I was born extremely bowl-legged, so much so that my legs needed serious medical attention as an infant. The doctors gave my parents a hard choice: put her legs in metal braces to straighten them out, or she'll live her life in a wheelchair. 

 

The doctors explained to my parents that it would be a painful process. I would scream and cry, but they could not take the braces off to offer any pain relief. 

 

I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for my parents — the anguish they likely felt. My parents couldn’t soothe me and probably couldn’t bear to stay in the room with me while I was inconsolable. And who could blame them? Truth be told, I have no memory of the experience, and for that, I’m extremely thankful. I can only go by what my parents told me.

 

Fast forward to a recent lecture I attended that touched upon preverbal trauma and provided an ah-ha moment. The lecture explained that when a parent doesn’t soothe a baby who’s crying out in pain, the baby feels both rejected by the parent(s) and feels responsible (at fault) for the rejection. Babies don’t yet know how to process this in another way. This was my story!

 

The realization that my early childhood pain was one of rejection made everything else in my life up to that point come very clearly into focus. It helped me understand why I was plagued by both low self-esteem and unworthiness.

 

On top of that, I experienced additional family drama and trauma, and so I entered college at the start of a decades-long depression. 

 

In my 50s, a wonderful nutritionist helped me escape much of the depression I had dealt with for so long. But I still felt stuck. I began to research the benefits of psychedelics and decided to embark on my first psychedelic retreat.

 

The journey was a spiritual awakening, where I no longer felt separate from others or from nature itself and the universe. I understood who I am and what I am. The journey also helped me heal so much from my negative family experiences and trauma. It was profound.

 

However, it was the work I did with my integration coach that enabled me to fully embody the beautiful revelations I received, and further the healing that came through in the form of a psychedelic experience. I knew immediately that I wanted to do for others what my coach had done for me — to guide them through their own psychedelic experiences and embody the revelations. Then, make whatever changes they want to see in their lives. 

 

This is how I became an Integration Coach in the world of psychedelics and transformational experiences. We all have wounds and experience some form of trauma and suffering in our lifetimes. Severe or mild, nobody gets through this life unscathed. Trauma and suffering are universal to the human experience. 

 

There are many kinds of trauma: physical, mental, generational, preverbal. It would be tragic and highly unfair for suffering to be universal if it weren’t for the wonderful opportunity that it offers us to dig deep within ourselves, get curious, connect with our true selves, and through this process, achieve both healing and tremendous personal growth. In short, an expansion and evolution of consciousness. 

 

Sincerely,

Hillary