Hello everyone

I’m so grateful to be able to connect with all of you in various forms and mediums.

It’s important to have community, reminders that we’re all working towards the same goals of living from more ease, love and deeper connection.  

We easily forget that the whole goal of therapy, the end game, is to be more present in the day to day and respond to the circumstances around us from the energies of clarity and wisdom and to make choices in alignment with our value system. 

A long-time friend I hadn’t spoken to in ages called me asking if I could recommend a therapist for her. She said she was ready for the type of “Big Girl Therapy” she’d heard me talk about, where we stop blaming the world around us and start healing and mastering our own nervous system so we can make different choices and actually change our lives and relationships. 

The day of the facetime call we caught up like not a day had passed… and then she broke down.  

As I was about to share some ideas and resources her son came in to ask her a question 

In a flash her fear and vulnerability vanished, and her safety strategy came on, fight.

I watched as she whipped her body around and with a cold, hard expression snarled at her son and told him to leave. 

My heart broke. 

I knew that snarl, had raised my own children with that snarl and had compassion knowing she was doing the best she could with a nervous system on fire and yet I also knew how she was hurting those she loved, that loved her, and that she was hurting herself.  

As he whimpered out of the room, she turned her attention back to me

I was kind, gentle yet firm with my dear friend. 

“I have all the time in the world for you,” I said. “I’ll wait while you go to your son and apologize for behaving like a wild animal. Take a breath, let’s slow it down and go hear what he needs. He’s a child, he has a need he can’t meet himself”. 

I could feel the message resonating deeply in her body. And then I felt her shame coming on. 

I knew that deadly cycle of fear, fight, shame and shut down all too well.  

“Don’t do that” I said gently. 

“Don’t’ go to that place, there’s nothing in that place that will help you or your son. You’re ready to start doing something different and you need the right work to help your system slow down and the skills to repair with the people you love”

I felt her body relax, she too took a breath, and said she’d be back in a minute. 

I nodded, I waited and then felt my own mind float back to the wild animal I had been to my own children, to those that loved me and that I loved. 

And I too didn’t give in to that deadly cycle of shame.

Instead, I choose compassion for that terrified and overwhelmed version of me and gratitude for the opportunities I’d had to heal, the skills to repair and for the forgiveness and grace granted to me from those I had hurt. 

My friend returned, life in her eyes, her shoulders down, more present

“Thank you” she said. “He needed that”. 

I smiled, “you needed that. We all did”. 

Next week I’ll be sending out an email about our new website, in person workshops and social media launch of Big Girl Therapy 

Enjoy your week, keep doing your best, forgive each other and much love 

Natasha