When I look back on these journals from late 2018 through 2021, I can finally see what I was actually going through. At the time, I was just surviving it. Now I understand it with so much more clarity — both as a survivor and as someone who studies trauma and nervous system healing every single day.

Here is what was really happening inside me.

10/21/18

I feel overwhelmed again.  More crying but I hold it in of course.  

Back then, I didn’t know this was a trauma response.
I thought something was wrong with me.

Now I know that this was my body finally releasing what it couldn’t release when everything was happening. My system had waited until it felt safe enough to break open. The overwhelm wasn’t weakness — it was biology. It was the beginning of my healing.

And the part of me that kept “holding it in” was the old survival strategy: be strong, protect everyone else, don’t let anyone see how bad it really is. I see that pattern so clearly now. It’s the pattern I help other women see in themselves.

10/22/18

We are not meant to stay wounded. 

This line hits me differently now.

That was the moment I subconsciously crossed from pure survival into rebuilding. My nervous system was starting to believe there was a future for me. That there was more than pain. That I wasn’t going to be stuck forever.

I didn’t know it then, but this is the moment my mission started to form.

Grace’s words were like a soft place to land. She reminded me that healing wasn’t only physical therapy and EMDR and legal chaos — it was breath, prayer, quiet, ritual, routine. Her way of healing mirrored what I now teach: the nervous system needs rhythm to feel safe.

Looking back, I can see how much her voice shaped my own healing philosophy.

Thu, Oct 26, 2018, 2:12 PM

to me

Precious Amy,

so,so sorry i missed your last call.

for the last 11 months, since my beloved cat went missing,

i have been making the devotion to go to our mission & pray & meditate..

i don’t go to the services,

i go to the beautiful ,quiet sanctuary , where  magnificent Gregorian chants are heard through the cathedral.

& no one is there.

i leave my house at  7 a.m.in the morning & & be there for at least an hour,

i ,then , go for a walk at sacred Avila beach.

that’s how my day begins.

it brings me solace & such joy to do this devotion.

it’s healing.

but, what else is happening , IS , visitors are coming out of the woodwork.

family , friends , every day,it’s been lot’s & lot’s of coming & going.

it will slow down, now that the summer is over.

it’s been a consuming & beautiful at the same time..

but, i feel badly that i’m not there to receive your calls, in the mornings,  when you’re on your way to work.

perhaps, a better time would be when you’re on your way back home.

or whenever else,  that works for you ??

yes, i want to know what goes on for you 

& about this new therapy that you are doing.

i also wanted to talk to you about the peroxide, oxygen therapy .

it’s an ancient therapy.

i am doing it ,now,  & the results are amazing.

so,my precious , beautiful Amy,

when it’s in the flow..we will know.

i love & adore you , always.

10/28/18

Ran into Debbie.  Here are things we talked about. 

She will not listen to the audio recording of what happened because she cannot have any more negativity in her life.  

That she can’t go back and forth in the detail.  She doesn’t want to get involved. She doesn’t want to be in the middle.  But she knows what she done is exactly that right? 

This was one of the deepest cuts.

When she said she “couldn’t handle the negativity,”
What she was really saying was:

“Your truth threatens my comfort.”

At the time, I didn’t have the language for what that does to a survivor.
Now I know it is called secondary wounding — the trauma after the trauma.

It made me feel crazy. It made me feel alone. It made me feel like my story was inconvenient.

And this is exactly why I do what I do now.
No one gets to silence another woman’s truth on my watch. Ever.

October 3, 2018

I can’t stop journaling. I was laying in bed thinking to myself, omg, quietly get out of bed and go write that down because it is funny.

I was thinking about how I need to write, I need to get this out.  I really have to speak up. What happened and is happening is in it.  I might have said that for as long as it takes for it to be right.  Maybe that is wishful and hope is the worst strategy.  So here I go.  I am speaking up.  But I also want to be an inspiration and I was thinking about a blog about the things I love to talk about.  

This was my body demanding integration.

My brain was trying to organize what had happened so it could finally heal.
Journaling wasn’t just writing — it was my nervous system rewiring itself.

This is why I am able to write now.
This is why I am able to speak about trauma with clarity.
This is why I feel called to guide others.

That sentence right there — “I have to speak up” — is the seed of everything I’m building today.

Prepare.  Very. STRANGE.  Topics.  

Strangulation.  I am now part of an elite group.  The STRANGLED ONES ❤

Lots of things can happen to you.  Imagine our house.  Mom, Dad, bonus pre teenage daughter, kindergartener.  Children did EMDR immediately.  THANKFUL for Dr. Shannon Lerach for fast tracking the kids trauma recovery.  Our daughter the Kinder, had bad dreams, she did “buzzies”, bad dreams went away…done.  

The children’s nightmares — the intergenerational trauma I didn’t see coming.

This part is still hard to read.

At the time, I didn’t understand that children absorb trauma through us.
My stepdaughter’s nightmares weren’t “drama.” They were trauma imprints.

My daughter hearing the screams and thinking it was a neighbor — and my stepdaughter instantly switching into protector mode — that moment has stayed with me. I didn’t want them to carry any of this.

Now I understand that healing myself is part of healing them.

This became a pillar of my work: the way trauma moves through families and how nervous-system healing is generational.

Stepdaughter had REALLY BAD BAD dreams, horror movie dreams of her mother floating above her in a white bohemian dress with something holding her beautiful blonde hair, her neck bloody and blood dripping down her arms to her fingers on to her in her bed.  We immediately got Arlo cameras after it happened. She was having such bad dreams we put one in her room.  She would bolt upright from sleeping reaching up to her Mother.  She would cry to her Dad after saying “I should not being seeing this Papa”  

She had this dream the night before, when her mother demanded we bring her cat back home. We had just met with Dr. Shannon Lerach referred from Sharon Blanchet partner at ABC FAMILY LAW.  She knows my amazing from Lance also a retired attorney rad surfer/swimmer/health coach/guru/best friend who lives on Maui now.  I called her.  I didn’t ask Lance it would take too long and he would hesitate but I called on her before for another friend who needed advice bad.  

I called her and said I need your help.  Stepdaughter 11, lice since September, failing school, unhappy, asking to live with us, weird stories about her stepdad putting her in the bathroom when her mother would leave for discipline so she couldn’t play with her toys and he would shout at her and stomp his heals.  She hid food in the bathroom until at 12.  Shhhhh.  We can’t talk about it.  We can’t talk about the real things going on in our communities. Nobody wants to her that I was strangled. Insert Big Eye Look here….

She said go see Dr. Shannon, she is capable to mediating new custody orders with the court.  Sort of like when you get divorced, amicably. They did.  We were all civil towards eachother until I got pregnant.   

So this is trippy.  My husband’s ex adn my ex husband’s mother share the same name and it’s not a common one. 

1/11/19

I write this 1,266 days after it happened which seems like a long time ago but I recently fell twice at a company picnic trying to win a water balloon contest.  It was the equal of a dog and it’s ball.  I was gong to catch that water balloon.   I resprained my neck, thoracic spine and lumbar sacral joint so it brings me back to day one.  I also gave myself a real good ligament injury in both of my wrists and so I find myself benched for the last six weeks.  I hate being injured.  The good news is my spine is way more resilient now, my poor wrists need some time.  But if I’ve learned nothing I’ve learned your body heals on it’s own timeline which has nothing to do with when you think you will be healed.  

Sometimes I feel like I should be writing a would you rather book because what we learned and went through after I was nearly murdered on my front door step 

I used to feel embarrassed by how that fall sent me right back into the original trauma.

Now I understand the science:
When your body gets injured in the same nervous-system pathways, it reactivates old stored trauma.

My body wasn’t overreacting.
It was reliving.

This became another lesson in my mission: the body keeps the score, and it also keeps the map for how to heal.

04/08/19

We had not realized how fragile she was having partially witnessed her mother’s violence. I remember

laying on the ground while on the phone with 911. I was on my hands knees staring down at the ground

as I was providing the requested details so they could send us help. I looked up and she was on the

stairs. I was mortified; my brain had not caught up to the fact that our children were upstairs. My

bonus first daughter was 11, my daughter was just a tiny four years old, a baby still, thankfully.

Although, my energy coach Lydia would say that our children go through what we their mother’s go

through. My step daughter has suffered the most through this she had to go through what I went

through and what her biological mother went through.

I do believe her mother has suffered a great deal through this and I do believe this has made it

exceptionally hard on all three of her children and will continue to be the case as long as she denies the

damage that has been done to them as a result. But my bonus first daughter is the one that has been

impacted the most. I am adult. Children who experience big trauma have their developing brains

rewired in ways that sometimes cannot be undone.

I looked up at her and begged her to go upstairs. I begged her to NOT let her little sister come

downstairs. Please please do not let your sister come down stairs I pleaded with her through a shaky

voice and tears. I was unprepared to let either them see me in this condition. I was so naïve to think we

could keep this from impacting them. I worry what will come up for my second daughter later in life.

She knows on some level deep down what I went through because they both went through it with us.

My husband could not get her off me. He stands six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. But she is

almost as big as he is so it was more equal. We hear of superhuman strength. How people can lift cars

to say another’s life. We also hear of psychotic breaks. I am hear to tell you they are both real. This

woman was enraged so much her strength was super human. She had a death grip on my neck. My

husband struggled to pull her off me. I released from her grip only because he was finally able to pull

her off. She grabbed me by the neck pushed me further into our garage and slammed my hips to the

car and then with incredible force slammed my skull to the hood of the car. You can hear it on the voice

memo that was being recorded from my pocket where my cell phone was. It was a baseball hitting a

steel bat.

We slide down the hood of the car, on the police report the officer observed the dust huge swipe of dust

removed by my body. Once we got to the floor she had her knee on my shins and she slammed my head

to the cement floor. As my husband got a grip on her he pulled her off me but she would not let go of

my neck and I came up with them. I had lost consciousness at this point and fell away from her grip

slamming my head for a third time to the cement.

My first bonus daughter was on our sun deck listening to the whole thing we later found out. But on

this day I had not put it together. Once we were off the 911 car with the police having arrived I was

allowed to tend to my girls. I went upstairs and desperately tried to lie. Once I walked in my tiny

daughter with huge wide eyes said “Momma! Did you hear that lady screaming?!” I immediately said yes

I did it was our neighbor she stepped on a nail, I went to help her, she is okay. Her big sister looked at

me with that look, that what are you talking about look. She then took control of the situation. Bless

her. She told her little sister to play on her iPad, a joy that is never awarded and she immediately turned

to me and closed the door.

She took one look at me and said you are bleeding. I said I am fine, no. I am fine. She said no you are

bleeding and we went to the bathroom to examine my ear and neck. I realized one of my earrings was

missing it was tore out during the attack. I was starting to realize what was happening and took my role

back. I hugged her and said it is going to be okay. Please don’t worry. I am so proud of the big sister

she was that day. She followed my direction and protected her little sister, my baby girl from witnessing

her mother in trauma. I am forever grateful.

You may feel expansive today, as if the reach of your positive influence can stretch far and wide. Your thoughts may be focused on making the world a better place or improving the lives of those less fortunate than yourself. In order to positively affect the world, however, you must believe in your abilities and trust that you can make a difference. If you feel euphoric about the possibilities, you will likely find many opportunities to serve others or share your many blessings with them. Consider how your actions can impact one person who impacts another and then another. What you do today could inspire others to do good deeds also.

Believing that positive change is possible is the first and most important step in making the world a better place. Those who doubt that they have the power to enact change or cannot see the significance of one person’s contribution seldom take the necessary steps that could help others or the world. A belief in your ability to make a difference in someone’s life or heal the world’s ills gives you the strength of will to make it so. You can then see the impact your actions—especially since the effects of your contributions will balloon outward to touch the lives of many. Believe that you can make a difference today, and you won’t have to look far to see the impact you are capable of. (Chills) 

September 8 2019

We were at a party last night.  I have seen these people at the same location with the same friend and I don’t remember them well at all. I certainly do not remember names.  I think last night I will remember some.  I want to be like I was before sometimes it is hard to not want it, it feels ungrateful for what I have now.  Better I wish that these little realizations that I am now with some impairments I didn’t have before and short term memory seems to be the last one still evident.  So I recognize this and now need to shift my focus.  I want to be solely focus on living our best life.  What is our best life.  What is best for Sage?  What is best for my husband? Me? What does our best life look like? 

This was grief.

Not grief for the people — grief for the parts of myself I lost.

Back then, I just felt scared and ashamed.
Now I can look at it with compassion:

I had a traumatic brain injury.
My brain was rebuilding itself.
Of course I couldn’t remember faces at a party.

This is something so many survivors don’t understand — the cognitive symptoms can last the longest. And this is why I speak so much about brain healing, oxygenation, fascia, breath, and nervous system repair today. Because I lived it.

December 29 2019

It’s been awhile.  Christmas happened.  I went bankrupt.  I didn’t wish my stepdaughter a Merry Christmas.  She reached out to her sister with empty promises of seeing her. 

This part reminds me how trauma doesn’t pause your life.
Bills don’t pause.
Parenting doesn’t pause.
Relationships don’t pause.

This matters to my mission because I want other women to know that the practical fallout after trauma is real. You aren’t failing — you’re recovering.

June 28 2020

Wow lots of time has passed. 

Covid 19 started we have been at home since March.

My stepdaughter and her Dad are talking she might go to Paris to model soon.  

We drove by past the kid’s mom old apartment.  A place that makes me want to throw up and my husband and stepdaughter dreamily says that she loves it that’s where her big brother lived. 

The GF of my stepson has come to our house for his birthday. 

We’ve had a brawl with my husband’s brother. 

My husband has stopped talking to his Mom again. So much. 

I am loving my job, overwhelmed but things are going really really well. 

Subject: Re: Truth of what happened…

Hi – Following up from 05/2018, wow! Time! 

Since then, I think we’ve seen each other twice maybe in person and we’ve never spoken about this email. 

About building a bridge.

Are you still in a space that you can’t deal with this? It won’t just go away and its hard for me to accept this level of family dysfunction. I firmly believe we all deserve and can do better. 

There is a narrative I hear that you believe we don’t like you. Please stop saying this to anyone including yourself. While there is an opportunity for us to dislike how we’re treated by you we are trying to be neutral and open for Julian. It’s really hard for us to be fake though and we feel very much unresolved with you. Or at least I know I do. 

We have hard time and can’t  just skip over the last six years since our last normal connection with you and not acknowledge that things have been broken and pretending they aren’t and thinking we can just pick up is simply not possible for us. We used to like each other before all this. 

From our side. I got strangled and hurt really bad. You told us we were awful for what we did to Aurleia and chose to no longer engage. 

At one point we thought we worked it out, you said you were sorry to not be able to support us during that awful time, we all hugged it out and then we never saw you again. 

I reached out and was told you can’t deal because of your bipolar. 

Honestly the cruelest most violent action taken on me was what happened to me that day. Having anyone tell me I’ve made it up, and then disengage completely because of what happened is a mind fuck.

If you still can go there know I don’t feel comfortable being around you so when we are required to be around each other for my stepson in the future do not read this as “I don’t like you”. 

It’s not that I don’t like you it’s that you have no appreciation for what I’ve been through or have fought back from and for all I know think I’m making it all up and with those circumstances, I don’t feel safe near you. 

While you have biPolar we have CPTSD from what happened and living with this dynamic is crazy-making behavior that I can’t tolerate as it does not support our best life. 

At the very least can we come to a final truce on it all. You believe your buddy, we aren’t comfortable so let’s stop playing and know that your presence won’t be near my stepson when he is near us by your choosing. 

Deal? Or we work this out but being over here unexpressed is violating a golden rule. 

Being authentic and speaking your truth.

Let me know. 

Fathers Day 2021 

We are becoming grandparents.

July 4 2021

We healed with stepson’s GF now wife. 

August 2021

We healed with my stepdaughter’s BF. 

12/5/21

Life is so different! 

This sentence is the beginning of integration.

It’s where I crossed from the identity of a victim into the identity of a survivor… and eventually into the identity of a teacher.

It’s where my nervous system finally believed I wasn’t in danger anymore.
It’s where my body understood I get to have a future.
It’s where my mission — breath, nervous system healing, sovereignty, truth, embodiment — began to solidify.

Why All of This Matters to My Mission

My mission is not just about trauma.

It’s about:

• how trauma rewires the body
• how trauma moves through families
• how to regulate a nervous system that has seen too much
• how to reclaim your voice after being silenced
• how to rebuild a self after catastrophic loss
• how to live again
• how to thrive again
• how to tell the truth in a world that prefers comfort over clarity

Everything I teach now — the breathwork, the yoga, the fascia work, the somatic healing, the daily rituals, the sovereignty, the spiritual rebuilding — all of it was born inside these journal entries.

This last entry and is where my survival ended
and my transformation began.

It’s taken almost ten years to get to this point. I have procrastinated for weeks on it because during reflection I thought deeply about what part of my mind will relax now that I have uncovered every available detail I have to help me make sense of something that will never made sense.

Why did she do it? This is the question I get asked to the most. I don’t have an answer and never will.

That’s okay. It’s my mine my burden. I am just grateful I didn’t keep walking towards the light that day.

That our the connection on the spirit level is so strong we were able to navigate through this.

When you survive you weren’t meant to walk away from everything changes. I can’t wait to share how good it’s gotten 🙂