Every pressure cooker has a valve that relieves the pressure to keep it even and manageable for the pot, so that the lid doesn’t fly off.

As humans, our valves that release the pressure may be a book, a cigarette, a glass of wine, sex, food, exercise, and the Internet.

These valves become a way of releasing pressure, escaping, or numbing ourselves, so we don’t feel too much pressure from the heat, and so that we do not explode, or have our “lid fly off” as in a rage attack, nervous breakdown, or psychotic episode.

Some of us have the luxury of living a life of simmer. These people have support while they get to go to school. They marry.

They have a career. They bring children into the world. So they might not need the release valves too often because the heat is manageable. After a stressful day, they may have a glass of wine.

Or they may feel the need to exercise or just to “check out from life” with the help of a movie or a book. All are acceptable ways to stay in balance and healthy ways to let off steam.

Others, however, including me, didn’t have that luxury.

The heat was turned up very early in life: broken boundaries, neglect, rape, violence. It all makes us need bigger valves.

One glass of wine works…until it doesn’t. One turns into two, turns into a whole bottle. But we manage our pressure and pain.

I managed for more than 15 years. Vodka was my valve. I started at the age of 13. I had a glass of red wine. Wow! That felt so good going down. And  the best with it was that it numbed out the discomfort in my body.

The jitters, the shaking, the cramp in my stomach, the pressure in my chest, it all got “softer,” it didn’t feel so “sharp” and painful anymore. I quickly learned that vodka worked even better, and used vodka to medicate for the next 17 years.

When I held her on my shoulder, my whole body calmed down; no shaking, no pressure in my chest, no stomach cramp, no bee swarm of thoughts in my head, no feeling of choking in my throat, no feeling of panic, or “he’s gonna get you.”

I felt at peace, relaxed, calm, and so in love.

Just like after a double shot of vodka.

She was like a drug. I loved the feeling I had when I held her. And I hated the feeling I had when we had to turn off the machines.

I had 10 months of sobriety when Kristina died. I had pretty much been drinking or thinking about drinking since I was 13. I was one of those survivors from a “very friendly male member of the extended family”…you know who I mean.

Then I sobered up, got pregnant and had Kristina. And now, she was dead.

I knew that there was no booze in the world that could take that pain away.

When the lid flies off, everything that has ever happened seems to come with it. The heat is on, and it feels as though there are too many bubbles, too many “issues”, too much to handle.

I studied my bubbles for 15 years with psychotherapy, breath work, non-violent communication classes, and workshops of all sorts that could help me calm down.

My husband and I had two more children, and they paid a big price for having me as their mother. I remember starting to feel my shakes, putting the girls in front of the TV, making sure they had something to eat, all the while thinking, “Hurry! Hurry! It’s coming on.”

When the girls were situated, I got a towel, crawled up into the corner of their room and screamed into the towel, pure, raw panic. Raw fear. The girls would turn around and ask, “You okay, Mommy?” And I would whimper “Sure, Honey, Mommy just has a little tummy ache.

I had no idea how to be a mom and how to keep my girls alive! I knew how it felt to lose a child, and I was not going through that again, at any cost. That desperation turned me into an overprotective, fearful, reactive mother.

I desperately looked for a way to become a better person, a better mom, a better wife, a better friend, a better whatever. The saying you hear in the recovery community – “At least I am not drinking” – was not enough for me. Being clean and sober must mean more than “being clean and sober”.

In the world of BEAM LiFE “clean and sober” includes compassion, love, and kindness, things I knew nothing about.

One day, I picked up my child in anger and “threw her in bed”. At that moment I had a vision that her neck broke; just a picture flashing by. 

Scared out of my mind, I dropped to the floor in yet another panic attack.

That day I stormed into my therapist’s office and demanded to know why she had not offered me medication.

After a total of 16 years of researching, studying, begging, and trying, I stumbled upon a book called Waking the Tiger by Dr. Peter A. Levine. It changed my life.

The book was talking to people like me. He explained trauma. And I thought, “Trauma? Could it be that I have had trauma?” Sounds a little dramatic don’t you think?

He talked about trauma survivors. Wow! Could that be me? 

Maybe I wasn’t crazy!

Maybe I didn’t need to be medicated…or locked up.

Maybe I was injured, and I could be healed!

Hope…that magical oxygen that gets you out of bed in the morning. Hope…that magical sensation and feeling in your body that can lift you out of depression. I didn’t have to just survive. I could live.

I had one session and felt as if I had come to, as if I had emerged from living in a fog.

Dr. Levine’s model for somatic experiencing involved three years of training. I knew I needed more and took the training. It changed my life. It saved my marriage. It saved my relationship with my children.

It wasn’t until I stumbled onto Peter Levine’s book Waking the Tiger that I realized there was yet another way to heal…beyond talking about it.

What I have learn from my alternative doctor is to not allow any labels to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a dangerous trap to allow a diagnosis to become an identity. I have learned to look at all the labels “other people” have given me as a result of my “conditioned behaviors.” And I have been fortunate to find my way out of these behaviors.

That is what I offer to you: A way out of your imprisoned behaviors to experience the wonderful feeling of being alive!

Throughout all these years and diagnoses I have also been going to an alternative doctor, who does not look at me through the lenses of diagnoses but see me as a full human being with emotional and mental pain from unresolved trauma.

Many of the ‘identifying symptoms’ for all these diagnoses are now healed. Not because of diagnosis, medication, or even talk-therapy. But because of alternative medicine, somatic nervous system release, and emotional resolution. Here is where I have been seen and heard and given a space to heal. And this is what I offer to you, a space to be heard and seen, and heal!

I have had clear insight into the world of recovery while still feeling an overwhelming sense of isolation, separateness, and that weird feeling of not belonging. I must say I have become quite insightful about how to develop self-respect, self-acceptance, and self-love, with social ease and comfort in the world.

In addition, I have been free from drugs, alcohol, and any mood-altering drugs for more than 30 years.

Because of diagnosis and my experience in recovery, I now have a keen understanding of how it feels to be clean and sober…and still not fit in…often because of Social Blindness due to PTS.

It has been a wonderful experience for me to find a way to live that includes self-awareness, self-control, and self-love.

Thirty+ years of healing have resulted in clarity of who I am, confidence in what I do, and courage to be…me.