How Mindfulness Helped Me Through Adversity, Trauma, and Healing

I’m an adult daughter of an addict and alcoholic mother. I grew up in a home that was affected by the family disease of alcohol, addiction, and mental illness. I witnessed a tremendous amount of pain and suffering in my life. My mother was raised in an abusive home by alcoholic parents, and she suffered from deep unhealed trauma. My parents divorced when I was age 6. As the oldest child of 4, I endured instrumental parentification, taking on household responsibilities and caring for my family. For many children of addicts, we learn to parent ourselves and our parents. Our entire childhood is full of dysfunction and instability. This was my experience.

Because of the extreme instability, I was placed in foster care and lived with relatives from the age of 7 to 10 years old. By age 10, my mother remarried, and I moved back home. By age 12, my mother and stepfather began using painkillers which eventually grew into heavy cocaine use. We moved frequently, living conditions were poor, and our home was chaotic. I felt constantly overwhelmed with stress, anxiety, and fear. I learned that my emotions were my internal alarm system, and this helped me manage my surroundings and awareness. At age 16, my mother started to experience health issues that required more care and responsibility at home. I had been coping with mental health challenges and emotional pain, but I had no idea what I was going through. I knew I needed help, but I didn’t know what to do. My mind told me that many people had it far worse than me and that I needed to stay strong for my family. I was always afraid to share anything about my life with anyone and felt alone in what I was going through.

One day, I built up the courage to ask my mother for permission to stay the night with a friend. That evening, I called my uncle and said the words, “I need help.” He picked me up from school the next day and I didn’t go home. Running away was difficult and terrifying. I didn’t want to hurt my family and I felt incredibly overwhelmed with guilt and shame. I felt like I had abandoned my mother and siblings and created enormous pain for them. I didn’t know how they would manage on their own without my help and support.

My mother and I didn’t speak after I left home. I started to experience increased anxiety as I found myself immersed in grief. I started working part-time and focusing on school. I searched for coping methods as I mourned over the life and relationship with my mother that once was and a new life without it. I knew I didn’t want to be a statistic and I wanted a better life. On bad days, I would write down my feelings and I started to pay attention to my thoughts. I would write down a thought and ask myself if it was calming me or making me anxious. I would also pay attention to the things I was grateful for, and I noticed changes in my anxiety and stress when I started to challenge my thoughts. There was no term for Mindfulness back then, but I realized later in life that this was a technique I developed to manage my anxiety.

The summer before my senior year of high school I met a boy that would soon change my life. That summer was unforgettable. I fell in love with him and his beautiful family. I felt a love and support that was unfamiliar and special. After I graduated, we started to build a life together and grow our careers. We married 10 years into our relationship. We had a daughter after we married, but our marriage ended in divorce when she turned 3. I found myself in deep grief once again and this time, I felt broken, lost, and completely devastated. I found myself returning to old patterns. I didn’t know who I was without my husband and the life I had known. I had to find myself at my core and take care of my daughter at the same time. It wasn’t easy.

I started going to therapy and one of my assignments was to journal daily. I would write down what I was grateful for, my values, my goals and dreams, and how I was feeling as I worked on my healing. I started to notice a change in my life as my perspective shifted into gratitude. I discovered an enormous amount of beauty on the other side of my pain and found magic within myself. I started to feel so much abundance in my life, and I enjoyed being alone.

After my divorce, my relationship with my mother started to change and grow stronger. Our relationship was always complicated because of alcoholism and past hurts. I didn’t know how to navigate a relationship with her, but we started talking more and doing things as a family. I started to experience love, joy, and purpose in my life. I remarried, continued to grow my career, started college, and soon gave birth to another beautiful daughter.

On February 11, 2007, I received a phone call with news that changed my life. My mother had taken her own life. This was the most emotionally devastating, heart-wrenching, and utterly painful moment of my life. I was overridden with guilt, shock, confusion, and anger. I had experienced grief in the past, but this was a deep pain that felt different. I experienced flashbacks and had visions of her death for months. I started losing sleep, and motivation and fell into depression.

Throughout my life, I had always tried to keep a positive outlook and believed that perception creates our happiness, but I was angry and dumb. I felt robbed and questioned everything. I started to view life differently and closed my heart. I soon realized I was losing myself and I was hurting my family. I knew that anger was a normal part of the grieving process, but it was also a reflection of old patterns and my old self.

I made the decision that I would not lose my humanity and I started to focus on mindfulness practices that I had leaned on in the past. I started a daily gratitude journal and would write down 3 things that I was grateful for each day. I noticed things started to change with my depression, anxiety, and mood. Anger and shame turned into love and compassion. I found enormous love and empathy for my mother as I started to recognize her pain. I started to see every day I had on earth as a gift. I could see the grief as a testament to the amount of love flowing through me and that the human experience is birth, life, death, and rebirth.

As I focused on motherhood, growing my career, and finishing college, other challenges started to arise, and my stress levels and anxiety were at an all-time high. As things continued to pile up, I would take pride in taking on more. In 2020, I fell apart. Not only did my stress and anxiety feel crippling, but I also had trouble sleeping, high irritability, constant headaches, and sadness, and I felt constantly exhausted. I was a workaholic, a chronic “yes” girl, and a perfectionist. I was always trying to prove my worth and feel like I was making a difference.

A friend invited me to sign up for a mindfulness course and I started learning to practice meditation and breathwork. I realized that I had been in survival mode for years and I had no clue. My body needed to slow down and recover from the lack of self-care, ongoing high stress, and unhealed trauma that was stored in my body. As I started to practice meditation and breathwork consistently, I began to see improvements in my stress level, anxiety, energy, sleep, moods, and overall well-being. I felt freedom from my suffering as I embraced present moment awareness, self-compassion, and the ability to self-regulate. After consistently practicing for a year, I finally found deep inner peace and wholeness.

70% of people spend most of their lives living in survival and stress. Studies say this high amount of stress in our daily lives creates difficulty relaxing the mind, and body, and increases the heart rate. This creates the risk of heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses. I know we can all relate to times we feel hopeless and that things will not get better, but I believe we all have the resources we need within us to heal. If we learn how to listen to ourselves and remove the noise, we can heal and connect with our inner power.

Science shows that mindfulness tools can help rewire our brains and a gratitude practice alone can affect the body’s biochemistry along with many health benefits. Mindfulness has helped me overcome great hardships, cultivate self-compassion, celebrate the present moment, and heal. During my healing journey, I learned that if we are willing to transform our pain into beauty, we can show up for the world as truly authentic, and become more resilient, loving, and kind.

Everyone deserves to heal, feel truly at peace, and create their biggest life – the magic is within you – it’s possible with Mindfulness!

“Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” ~ Buddha