If that doesn’t ring true to you, I understand why.
After all, the modern world remains patriarchal. At a glance, the structures of our societies seem as if they were built by men and for men.
What if you look closer?
Consider families.
Friendship circles.
Communities.
You see women at the centre.
We connect. We cultivate. We nurture.
Whether it comes from a single incident, or recurring events in our lives, trauma shapes our deepest and most limiting beliefs about ourselves.
We take that emotional pain and internalise it.
We turn those formative experiences into hardened truth.
We believe the lies that we tell ourselves or that have been told to us.
That we are not enough…that we are undeserving…that suffering is all life has in store.
And the most dangerous thing of all?
Our limiting beliefs are not benign, and they are not contained within us alone.
Just as we women can wield positive influence over everyone around us, we can also transmit pain. And as we sit at the centre of our families and our communities, the ripple effect is radical.
For me, that ripple effect started with my mother.
Some of my earliest memories are seeing her in pain.
As a six year old, I witnessed physical abuse for the first time, and I saw her move into her next relationship purely out of fear.
She put on a happy face to the outside world. But inside, she was fighting with the cards she felt life had dealt her.
In my teenage years, she became an aggressor herself, redirecting her pain towards me.
Her anger was fuelled by fear and shame. She felt completely stuck, like she couldn’t control anything in her life and she reached a point where she couldn’t keep her emotions under control.
Now, I see that she was trapped by this sense of hopelessness. But for years after, I perceived it as weakness. And at times, I hated her for it.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I uncovered some family skeletons. I came to recognise where my mother’s pain had really come from; her own childhood of neglect and abuse.
Our trauma doesn’t start or end with us.
When it is untreated, it settles into our DNA and is passed down through the family line.
At its most fundamental, it comes down to this.
All that pain has to go somewhere. It can turn inward, so that we end up hurting ourselves, or turn outwards, so that we end up hurting others. And most of the time? It has us doing both.
But here’s the flip-side of that same truth.
When we heal our own pain, the impact extends well beyond us.
When we free ourselves from our trauma, we free all the women that come after, and all the women who came before.
There is nothing more powerful than a woman healing.
There is nothing more liberated than a woman who says ‘this pain ends with me.’
At a time of profound spiritual crisis, I see women as warriors who can turn the tide.
But this is only possible if we trust ourselves.
When you’re caught up in your own pain, you stop believing in possibility.
The idea that YOU can take control of your past and your future? It’s almost too radical to accept.
You forget those truths you knew all along. You lose touch with the wisdom that already resides in you.
But I promise you it’s still there.
For so many women I work with, healing is the first step to finding their purpose because they can finally find some meaning in everything they have experienced.
They have clarity around what they’re here to do, and how they can turn their pain into something powerful.
It sounds counterintuitive, I know. But when we release the emotions of our darkest experiences, we can find wisdom in them.
As we heal, we hold these experiences up to the light and see the forgiveness and freedom we never thought possible.
And it’s as simple as going within.
