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dvonneloring
Jul 20, 2022

My Story - Part 2 Healing

20th July Written by Dvonne Loring

My healing journey began, although I didn’t know it at the time, after that relationship breakdown in 2011 that catalysed the reserves of unresolved trauma to come bleeding out of me. Although my healing journey had begun, I was so inundated with pain to notice.


My curiosity, my sensitivity and my plight led me to study holistic counselling to feed my existential and philosophical hunger to understand this raw and complex human experience.


In the vortex of unconscious misery, a piece of insight came to me - “I’m experiencing the world through a negative lens”. It was the first time I was invited to de-personalise my situation. There was more to me than this.


With equal amounts of courage and fear, this led me to some of the most transformative work I’ve done with psychotherapists where I was brought into deep intimacy with my own shame, agonising grief and more recently harrowing loneliness. I was becoming aware of the anguish caused for uncritically believing stories born out of survival.

Within the safe space held for me, I discovered an underlying Truth and I connected with a nugget inside that knows I’m a good person and knows I’m good enough, something that the creed of trauma sadly made me believe otherwise.


This was a -s l o w- discovery and there was much at play just outside of my awareness.


“Most awakenings emerge from an accumulation of insights over time” - Dr Nicole LePera


Despite connecting with this beautiful piece within, I was still endlessly traversing the pain of an unlived life, where my suffering was bereft of meaning and that nugget still felt elusive.


Yet there was a part of me that just couldn’t settle that ‘this was it’. I knew there was more to life than this.


That curious desire acted as a driving force. I’d managed to stop taking hard drugs, partying myself into oblivion, I quit my job in corporate finance and I’d found myself in a healthy relationship with a beautiful man.


I’ve journalled my entire life; finding a safe companion in pen to paper has had the power to penetrate my isolation.


By my mid to late twenties the texture of my anxiety eased from paralysing to moderate. However my pulls to the familiar were powerful and my unresolved trauma began to present in new ways: stress - a different expression of the same thing.


I was in the grips of survival mode. Rampant perfectionism, boundaryless people pleasing and over-achievement were attempts to placate and hide my persistent shame, not good-enoughness and self doubt.


This is where somatics, embodiment and nerding out of the nervous system became a saving grace and helped me come back to a place that had never felt safe to me - my own body.


My healing journey isn’t some profound tale of waking up awakened, healed and enlightened one day where my pain dissolved with a miraculous 2-step formula. Quite the opposite. I’ve faced some of the deepest recesses of my human experience. I’ve fallen to knees having met heavy truths and begged for mercy for peace to descend. It wasn’t until a few short years ago that I identified with the word “trauma” to describe my experience.


With hindsight I recognise that I’ve always been held and guided by my internal Knowing, even when I thought I was completely alone.


I realise I’ve had many moments along the way that stood as an unknowing intentional commitment to the potential in myself, meeting a repetitive impasse with a sacred pause and renewed presence.


I now understand that my pain isn’t what made me broken but what’s calling me back into my wholeness.


I’ve had more courage than I gave myself credit for.


Possibility is available to me.


Life is an ally not an enemy.


What happened to me wasn’t fair; it had nothing to do with me while also recognizing it couldn’t have been any different.


Healing is meaningful because it’s what has transformed my life. I’m living a life I never could have imagined for myself. I couldn’t. Trauma had dispossessed me of my creative and imaginative abilities and all I was left with was shameful fear. I’m committed to pouring myself into this life. The deeper I go, the more deeply I fall in love with my life.

I’m tapping into possibilities I truly thought weren’t available to me and reserved for the lucky few who aren’t touched by the hand of trauma.

I now have a somatic reference for self trust. I know what it feels like. I now trust that I will try my best to ensure decisions I make are ones that are informed and in service of my higher self. I’m no longer a pinball ricocheted between different reactive trauma responses.

I look in the mirror and don’t break down because all I see is someone who is broken. I see a woman of softness and strength who is devoted to the practice of forgiveness, especially towards herself for being so ashamed of who she thought she was and for the things she had to do when she didn’t know any better. I see a woman who is increasingly connecting with her worth, deserving, esteem, belief and gifts.


I still feel the depths trauma have reached inside. I believe they’ll always be with me. Having had to chronically abandon myself when I was young is something I’m still learning how to forgive myself for now. But, I’m fine tuning the practice of lovingly managing it in a way where it no longer overruns my life. It’s no longer a war that I’m caught up in. I recognise I have a sensitive nervous system and I’m now treating it with the respect, nurture and care it has always deserved.


“True healing is not a state in which we become liberated from feeling but freer and flexible to experience it more fully” - Matt Licata


I’m no longer just existing or surviving. I’m not only living now, but I’m creating a life I’m proud of.


In essence, I’m just a woman who has found meaning in what has felt like an unjust battle lined with hopelessness. Where now I’m soothing fear with safety. I’m meeting my mind’s reach to know everything with trust. I’m comforting self-loathing with self-compassion. I’m replacing filtered versions of myself with authenticity. All done with exceeding intention.


This is my story in the tiniest of nutshells. It’s one I never thought I’d share, not even a whisper because the shame from trauma has a way of violently silencing you, making you question yourself, your reality, you’re unsure of what’s true and what’s real because of the inherent disconnection with Self trauma imbues.


May this be an homage to the preciousness of the human spirit, to the beauty and brutality of life and a piece of hope to those dealing with devastation.


This is a proud moment for me, it brings tears to my eyes in acknowledgement of how far I’ve come to reclaim my story.


May this continue to humbly inform me to guide others to connect with the inherent validity that you’re meant to be here; that yours is an important and unique piece in the mosaic of life and to advocate that your truth matters. I understand how insecurity can make life excruciating and so to offer you the truth that your Knowing is with you. It’s there within the fear, tucked behind the exhaustion and what you’re currently doing to survive.


There is hope. If you'd like me to walk alongside you into the depths and go on a journey of self discovery, connect with me here



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