08/18/2026
Back home, surrounded by all the to-dos, the bills, the gardens, the chores, the minutia of daily living.
Processing the whole trip is a ridiculous endeavor at this point. There were three distinct pieces and each had its own enegy, adventure and pictures.
The first part was my solo trip into the Anatomy Trains version of Trauma work. It was deeply satisfying to be surrounded by passionate, educated people who were all intensely curious about how we as practioners can help our clients move through trauma.
Here is my biggest takeaway. We all have trauma. Childhood trauma, generational trauma, cultural trauma, relationship trauma, environmental trauma, sexual trauma, societal trauma, birth trauma, physical trauma, etc.. That trauma gets stuck in our tissues when we do not allow space and time for it to digest out. That "stuckness" costs us energy to maintain and it restricts our movement patterns.
As a good stoic, raised in a Gen X environment, there were no cues on how to process anything. Get up, brush off, keep moving. Rinse and repeat for decades. There was no one asking me to talk about my emotions or how I felt about anything that was happening to me. I recall one of my very few therapy appointments where the therapist told me I had exceptional emotional resilience and I was pretty sure that meant I was good to go. I had perfected a coping mechanism for lifes chaos. I would not be a burden to anyone. Nothing was going to keep me down.
S**t.
I had been keeping me down for decades.
Keeping me small and contained so I could always weather any storm.
So here's the work with Trauma. Find the places that are stuck, and lean in. Thats physical and emotional. There are some places in me that have not seen the light of day since the 80's. There are thousands of times where I felt a wave of emotions coming at me that I decided, "not today" and side stepped it. My foundation is no where near as solid as I had assumed and my skin is no where near as thick.
The goal here is to release the restrictions, retrain the patterns and embody a new way of moving through the world.
Its not light, casual work. Its deep and important and the growth is worth feeling vulnerable for.
