Hi, everyone. Welcome. This is Leila Reyes with From Trauma to True Love, and I'm so happy to be here with you. We're at the end of the year, and instead of resolutions or big declarations like this is gonna be my year, I wanna simply state, you're here. I don't want to say that like a cliche.

I mean it literally and intimately. You're here after everything that shaped you, like me. Like me, you're here after disappointments that broke your heart. Like me, you're here after years where you thought that you would never get through what you were going through. And like me, you're here even if right now feels messy, unfinished, or confusing.

And that matters. It matters because you know what? We often treat survival like it doesn't count. Like if we're not thriving, then we must be failing. But honestly, there are seasons of life where the win is not transformation.

The win is that you didn't disappear, that you stayed. Like me, maybe your body stayed when your mind wanted to check out or your spirit stayed alive even when someone tried to silence it. Maybe you stayed in relationships long after you wish you had because some part of you maybe was trying to survive without losing everything. So let me say this just so it has time to land. There's dignity in surviving.

And from survival, guess what? New life is possible. From survival, thriving is possible. It was possible for you just like it was possible for me. And so I want to talk a little bit about what sits underneath almost everything that I see in my work, and it's this quiet looping belief.

And it's different for each of us, but it can sound something like there's something wrong with me, I don't matter, I'm not safe, I'm never going to have what I want. Maybe you don't say it out loud, but it shows up in different ways in our lives. It can show up second guessing yourself. It can show up like apologizing for having needs. It can show up by over explaining your emotions or over explaining your actions.

It can show up by taking responsibility for how everyone else feels and everyone else's experience except your own. And I want to talk to you like as if you were sitting right across from me, like sitting right here with me at this table here on my little patio with the wind blowing and sounds maybe in the background that I don't know if you can hear or not. But what I want you to know really, really from all of my being, I know that there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. You became someone who learned to survive situations that you never should have had to survive.

And you're still here. And that's what matters. That matters. If you're like me and grew up in an environment where feelings were too much or where truth was inconvenient or where pain was dismissed or harm wasn't named and put into context, what happens is we learn to turn against ourselves. We might think, even if these aren't the words that we have, but it's just that experience of shrinking ourselves.

Like, if I can just be smaller or quieter or nicer or more forgiving, then maybe everything will be Okay. Over time, that becomes an unconscious relationship that you create with yourself, disappearing yourself. So without even noticing, then these are some things that can show up. And I want you to know I've experienced all of these. Maybe you override your instincts.

Maybe you gaslight your own perceptions. Or carry like I said earlier, maybe you carry responsibility that was never yours to carry. Maybe you try to make yourself lovable by disappearing the very parts of you that make you you, which basically are all the parts that are authentically lovable about you. These aren't character flaws. Know, disappearing ourselves, they're adaptive survival strategies, and they worked.

They protect us in a world that should have protected us. And they're the strategies that saved us back then, but they're the same strategies. Those same strategies hurt us now if we use them today. So this is where self compassion isn't soft, it's accurate. We're not excusing, I'm not excusing what happened.

I want to name what it cost. So there's, you know, when I'm thinking about this year ending and I'm thinking about like possibilities, right? I'm thinking about shifts and what can change, like what facilitates a change, what happens, what something triggers us to say, you know, I'm ready for a change. And this happens in adulthood, some shift. Maybe it can just be something soft like the ending of a year where we can say, okay, this is the year that I'm going to give to myself transformation.

Right? But in general, something shifts. A breakup, maybe it's a friendship ending in a familiar way. Maybe it's waking up one day where we're just thinking, oh, there has to be more to life than this. And when that happens, there's a realization that kind of sneaks in.

And, you know, I know that I felt this way. I told I said this to myself, maybe not in these exact words, but it's like, I don't want to just get through my life anymore. I want to be fully in my life. I want to belong to myself inside of my relationships. I want to stop abandoning myself and more importantly, I want to stop worrying about someone else abandoning me.

I want to stop changing who I am to avoid rejection. Stop trying to fit in, that kind of thing. I'm just going to be me and just let myself all come forward. I remember a phase in my life when I realized that almost every decision that I made was organized around making sure that people didn't leave me. And yes, it came from an early wound.

Right? It wasn't about what I wanted. It wasn't about what was true for me. It was just what will not disrupt connection. And here's the thing, being in a relationship is not the same as being safe.

Changing your authentic self to stay connected can become compliance. It can become self erasure, but it doesn't create safety. It's a quiet prison that you barely notice the bars until you try to show up as your authentic self and they get slammed back into, hey, you're not being who you know, like somebody just like, boom, no, you be this way. But you've been hiding who you authentically are all along. And when you try and bring that self forward, bring your true self forward, then the people around you might want you to stay the same.

So it's a little bit of a breaking free process for sure. But the moment when you finally see the bars, it's often not dramatic. It can be very subtle. It can be really internal and it can sound something like, I deserve to exist in this relationship too. It can sound like my voice matters here and I'm not going to be silenced anymore.

Like I'm going to bring my authentic self forward. And it might even come with, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that, but I know that I don't want to disappear myself anymore. That whisper is the beginning of transformation. So if that's where you are, you're not behind.

You're right where you need to be. Wherever you are is right where you need to be. I want to take a minute, you know, at the end of the year, I do some processes where I gather like, you know, just what happened during the year and what, yeah, just what I want to acknowledge. And here, if we're talking about the journey from going from surviving to thriving, then I want to talk about gifts from the trauma, but not in a way that romanticizes the pain or the trauma that we have been through because trauma is definitely not a gift. But when people say things like everything happens for a reason or well, this made you stronger, I want to gently say, yes, maybe it did make you stronger.

I know there I can look at that and go, yeah, like I can see that. But also I want to say no. It could have broken you, but it didn't. It wounded you, it didn't have to happen. There were seasons in my adulthood, a specific period of time where I experienced real depression, and it was a result of that early trauma.

Being in the middle of it, it did not was not a gift. It did not feel like a gift at all. If you've lived in that darkness, you know it doesn't feel meaningful. It doesn't feel like there's any kind of gift here. It feels like your soul is underwater and it's not just sadness, it's a heaviness, it's a fog.

And it takes effort to just do things that most people or people who don't have are experiencing depression, they don't even have to think about it. Before I experienced depression, I didn't fully understand it. I cared about people who were going through it, but I didn't And get it in my then I went through it. And now, only now, looking back on it, I'll say I don't wish it on anyone for sure, but today I can see that something grew inside of me because of walking through that. A deeper empathy, less judgment, more tenderness for sure, tenderness for people who are simply hanging on or longing to break free from the patterns or living inside of and don't know how.

And here's something important. So the gift wasn't inside the trauma. The trauma created harm. And the meaning that connected to that trauma, of course, and then updating the meaning came later through healing. And so here's what really matters most, I think, around this is when trauma happens, the child mind makes meanings.

There's something wrong with me. I don't matter. I'm not enough. And as we grow up, the meaning becomes the prison. And healing is a process of updating the meaning, taking down those bars.

And we update the meaning with an adult truth, a truth that can hold complexity. And with safety and compassion and recognizing, really being able to see, oh, with compassion, nothing's wrong with you. The child logic, you know, from inside the child's mind, you know, we just were trying to survive. So we made the meanings that would help us survive. No problem.

Really though, the truth only reveals itself years later when we seek the truth, when we ask for the truth, when we push up against those beliefs. So I want you to know from me, because of what I've lived through, I can sit with you while you're discovering the truth for yourself. Your job, your only job, is to stay with yourself and to stay open to discovering a deeper truth about yourself and what happened. And I'll hold that with you. I'll hold that with you and for you until you can hold it on your own.

That's you sitting here with me where I I really wish that I could see directly into your eyes and tell you that. Let's just take a moment to go inward together. If you're not driving, might go ahead and close your eyes. Then just take a breath that belongs just to you. Let your shoulders soften.

Let your jaw relax. And take another breath all the way down into your hips. And then just ask yourself, what did I survive? What did I get through this year? What did I get through in my whole life in my life?

And I'm not asking you to revisit every detail. I'm just asking you to acknowledge what happened. So just notice this happened and I'm here. Maybe there was a loss, a trauma, maybe there was a humiliation or loneliness. Even if you don't have the words for it, just acknowledge this happened and take another breath.

And now ask, who did I become as I lived through this? And don't rush. I'm gonna go ahead and name some things that I know are true. If you lived through trauma, I know these things are true. You became strong even when you felt weak.

You became resourceful even without resources. You became brave even when fear lived in your body. And I know that these things I know this for sure, like with fear, you can't be brave without fear. There's no need for courage if you don't have fear. So just acknowledge anything that's true for you.

You became protective even if that protection looked like disappearing yourself so that you becoming invisible so that you would create safety for yourself. All of it's true. And you became resilient in ways that maybe no one ever saw. And just take a breath into that. Remember acknowledging without re traumatizing yourself with memories, just knowing this happened.

And so these qualities, your strength and resourcefulness and courage and able being able to protect yourself, your resilience, these qualities were not created by trauma. I believe they may have been activated by trauma, like, Okay, now it's time to like a gene, right, when it gets turned on. I've heard this. It turns on a gene, right? But these are good ones.

These are like this gene got turned on and activated from the trauma. They come from you. These qualities are inside of you. They're innate in you. And they're your qualities so you can continue to develop them in ways that serve So yes, acknowledge harm happened.

Something happened that hurt me. And yes, you built muscles that you never should have needed. But today, those muscles can serve you differently, especially when they become conscious. Guess what? Transformation gets activated.

And that's where the shift moves from what's wrong with me to there's nothing wrong with me and today I get to choose to live from who I truly am. And so tell yourself, I'm here. I'm here and I have the capacity to learn how to create the life that I want. I have the capacity to learn how to use all those qualities to show up as my authentic self from this day forward. And then take another breath and tell yourself, what happened happened.

Right? We're not trying to erase it. It happened. You can't anyway. It happened.

And today, I choose consciously from truth, not from the old meanings I created to survive, but what's from actually true about me. So I, you know, I want you to know that we gather our story not to stay stuck there, but so shame loses its grip. Naming reality is actually liberation. It liberates you from old patterns, from staying stuck. It liberates you from shame.

In the beginning, it might feel like when you're naming these things, might feel like you're activating the shame, but what you're really cutting through is the shame and towards liberation. So I'm hoping that that is helpful to you. I want to talk a little bit about hope because it can get misunderstood. Hope is not pretending everything will magically get better and it isn't bypassing pain. Hope is being able to recognize, look, I didn't choose what happened but I get to participate in what happens next.

So you get to choose your relationship with yourself and whether it's going to be kind and loving or not. And you get to choose your relationship with yourself and others, whether you show up as your authentic self, take the risk in being courageous and brave because not everyone will maybe not everybody will like out of 7,000,000,000 people, not everybody is going to like you. Right? So it's like really saying, okay, I'm here for the people who like my authentic self, not the masks that I've been wearing. So you get to choose to stop attacking yourself and start loving yourself.

You get to question the negative stories you've believed and learn what's really true about you. And you get to choose relationships where you get to be your authentic self. And you get to choose people who show up emotionally for you, who are truly present with you. Usually people will say, but how do I do that? And I just want you to know that right now you don't have to know how right now.

You just have to connect with what it is that you want. And then you can, for now, you can borrow my faith in the process while you learn to trust your own wisdom and break free from the patterns that no longer serve you. And I want you to know that this was not easy for me and I'm not going to pretend it's easy work. It takes willingness. It takes letting go of what you once thought brought you safety and to take risks, to cultivate that courage and take risks to show up in more authentic ways, to really organise your life around truth and belonging to yourself.

You know, if that feels distance, it's okay. You don't leap into it. You practice one honest conversation after another, one boundary after another, one pause where you ask, what would it look like to be loyal to myself right now? That's the work. And it changes everything, I promise you.

So that brings me to something that I really I want to invite you into gently, really gently a way of honoring what you lived through without reliving it. Remember you don't have to relive anything, I promise. I want to give it so this is really simple. It's not performative. It's not forced gratitude.

It's just plain simple truth. So let yourself hear this and softly say it to yourself internally, I honor what I lived through. I honor what I survived. Notice your body letting that land. Maybe there's tears or numbness or nothing at all.

It's all okay. Your nervous system hears you when you say that. I I honor I choose to honor what I lived through. Take a breath, and then tell yourself what I've said to you. Say, there's nothing wrong with me.

I survived what I survived, and now I get to learn how to thrive. And then remember, you're here Just like the acorn that holds the possibility of a mighty oak, possibility lives here within you to create anything that you want. You don't even have to believe it. I don't like the oak, the little acorn doesn't have to believe anything, it just has the potential inside of it. So you don't have to believe anything, just let the words exist inside of you.

And this isn't positive thinking, this is truth, plain simple truth. So as we close the year together, I want you to know that you're right here where you need to be on your journey. You don't need to be anywhere else. Healing isn't linear, it's layered, it loops, it deepens. And through all of it you're here.

And because you're here, there's room for love to grow in your life in ways you haven't even imagined. Not love that shrinks you or erases you, but love that truly meets you. The ways that you relate to yourself are always evolving. With more awareness there will be more shifts. Your relationships, your choices, your sense of self, everything, everything, your future begins to shift as you, your ideas and thinking about yourself evolves and changes.

So if you can't see it yet, there's no rush. Clarity comes as your body feels safe, and so that takes whatever time it takes. But I just want you to know that I'm here with you, walking alongside of you, believing in the possibility for your coming year to be a year that you discover who you truly are and that you thrive in your life and in love. And so welcome to this next year. I'm Leila Reyes, and this is From Trauma to True Love.

And I just want to leave you with one thing. Your past doesn't get the final say in your relationships. You do. Thank you for joining me on this episode of From Trauma to True Love. I honor your courage for being here taking steps towards the love and connection that you truly desire.

I've been there too, stuck in painful patterns, longing for love but unsure how to create it in a way that felt safe, real, and lasting. You don't have to figure it all out on your own. If you're ready to explore what's been holding you back and discover what's truly possible for your relationships, I would love to support you. Visit Leila Reyes, l e I l a r e y e s, Leila Reyes, and schedule a call today. We'll take the first step together toward the deep, meaningful love that you were born to have.

I can't wait to connect with you. Until next time, take good care of yourself and know that real, lasting love is within your reach.