Welcome back to From Trauma to True Love. This is a podcast where we explore how early trauma impacts our capacity to create safe, nourishing, and lasting love, and how we can break free to write a new story for ourselves. I'm your host, Leila Reyes, and I'm so glad that you're here with me today. If you've ever wondered, can I heal enough to create healthy love? This episode is for you.

I'm thrilled to introduce you to Emma Churchman. Her powerful work as certified a trauma chaplain and mentor is rooted in her journey of overcoming acute childhood adversity. With over twenty five years as a spiritual and business leader, Emma has guided thousands through the labyrinth of trauma to reclaim hope and strength. As a pioneer in trauma resilience, she created a trauma recovery certification program, and she's the author of three books on trauma recovery. I learned about Emma and her work through our mutual publisher and had the privilege of an advanced read of her memoir, Surviving My Mother's 123 Personalities and Transforming a Legacy of Abuse.

Emma is a woman after my own heart. Like me, she boldly invites us to rewrite inherited stories. And from the focus of my work, she's taken the courageous step of opening herself up to true love. Today, we'll talk about the precise shifts that helped Emma move from fragmentation to wholeness, including what changed in her to experience healthy love with her husband, Jeff, and the practical steps anyone can take to heal enough to create relationships that are safe, steady, and real. I'll share a little later how you can get your copy of Unshattered, but first let's welcome Emma Churchman.

Hi, sweetheart. Hello there. I'm so glad to be with you today, Leila. Thank you. Me too.

Me too. Your memoir Unshattered is raw, honest, it's deeply moving. I shared with you before the call that I read it two times. And what I want to do is weave in your story of transformation and how your journey led you to healthy love. Many of my listeners are unsure if healthy love is even possible for them.

And your story really offers a very powerful message to anyone asking if they can heal enough to experience the love that you and Jeff have. So can you start, I'd love to hear just to give the list or my listeners a perspective and framing. Can you start by just sharing a little arc of your story just in two or three minutes? I know that there's so much involved in your story that might be hard, but. Yeah, so very briefly, I was raised by a mother with 123 personalities that was not diagnosed till I was 14, 15 years old.

My father was a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic. They divorced just before was, my mother was diagnosed. And so he really took a backseat. And at that point I became the secondary parent to my three younger brothers who are two, eight and 12 years younger than I am. And what happened as a result of everything that we experienced being raised by someone where we never know who they were, you know, who was going to be out next, and by a father who was either abusive or unavailable, is that we all chose to experience adulthood in different ways.

All three of my brothers became drug addicts and alcoholics. Our father who was an alcoholic died by suicide in 1998 when I was 24. All three of my brothers have died by suicide in the past four years and my mother is still alive. And then I have become a trauma chaplain, a business leader, a thought leader pioneering this field of trauma resilience. So the book is about how the heck all this happened.

Right. But then the choices that we make that inform who we become as a result of living in trauma, yeah. Exactly. And so towards the end of your book, you talk about being in this relationship with Jeff. So you left that out of the story And I so can you connect just a little bit of that, like, into for this overview is then you did something and or you opened yourself like, what happened to where you are now in this relationship with a loving, supportive partner?

Let me just give you guys the overview of this part where in the last few, last couple years, or I'm not sure exactly how many years, but Emma made a big shift and she like opened herself up to love and a healthy kind of love. And so we'll talk more about that later when she comes back, when Emma comes back. I'm really excited about this conversation because the amount of trauma that Emma just shared that she's experienced with the loss of all of her brothers and her father has been tremendous. And then to be able to come to this point where she's available to be in partnership with someone in a really healthy way, if anything, would recommend that you read the book for that reason, is to see how that transpired towards the end of this particular book that Emma wrote and now she's back. Yeah, so let's talk about trauma in real time.

Her power just went out Oh my generator. So it kicked off. Thank goodness. I was able to hop back on. But, you know, the other thing you'll see right behind me that I've actually had two books published this year, Unshattered, that we're talking about.

But then The Deep End of Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Helene, which was my experience jumping into my small mountain community. We live on top of a mountain in Western North Carolina and there are about 300 of us in community and hurricane Helene devastated our community in September 2024. And on day three, I got myself down to the fire station. I hiked down three miles. I had to bushwhack because all the roads were gone.

And I said to the fire chief, how can I help? And he immediately started giving me assignments of helping people process their trauma in real time. And one of the results were over a year out now from Helene, but they're still working on roads in our infrastructure. So it is not unusual for our power to go out and I apologize for that. No, that's okay.

Let me, let me, let me highlight one thing that you've said because this really speaks to your resilience and your, like, who you are. You, You mentioned, like, this is a, like, who are you becoming in the face of trauma? You didn't say it exactly that way. But, and then you, and then you go down to the, you go down to the, the station to say, how can I help? Like, there's something inherent in you that is about love, that is about helping, that is about even though you were put in such a position of responsibility, and people will have to read the book to understand me saying that.

We won't have time to go into all of those, that part of it. But I just want to really acknowledge who you are as a person that did choose the path that you chose and became who you organically inherently are as a whole human being. And so that leads me to the question of how would you say what drew you into trauma recovery work and then what inspired you to write Unshattered? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I really had to heal myself and that happened through different iterations. And one of those was going to seminary to really deepen my relationship with God but also figure out like who am I as a spiritual being and part of the requirement to graduate from seminary was to do residency at a hospital. What year did you go into seminary? I started in 2010. Okay, go ahead.

When I was 35 and then I ended up doing two different residencies in including in a level one trauma center. And I realized, oh, you know, I'm really good at accompanying other people in their trauma. But in doing that, you get so confronted with your own, Can I cuss with your own shit? Yes, you have to figure out how to work through it so that you're not bringing that into those literally life or death conversations. Right?

So in my experience of helping, and then I also did a stint in hospice chaplaincy. So in my experience of helping literally hundreds of people die, some of them were through very traumatic situations. I learned how to process my own grief and realized and my own trauma and realized that that's a capacity that I have, not only to heal myself, but to help others on their healing journey. Did that answer your question? Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. It's not, and to know that it was, you know, I'm framing this also in people who listen to my podcast is that it didn't happen overnight. Right? This wasn't like you just didn't go from, I've experienced trauma to, you know, I'm now using it to help people. There was a process that you went through.

And you said that in your book, well, you said you chose to reframe what happened for you rather than to you. And you write, The challenge became a catalyst for growth and every scar a source of wisdom. So I know, my listeners, if anyone's in my community that's reading your book will say, how can a scar be a source of wisdom? I know that, but I want to know your perspective on that. How can a scar be a source of wisdom?

Yeah, everything informs how we respond, right? So when my brothers started dying by suicide, and by the way, one of them died six weeks before hurricane Helene, another died two weeks after hurricane Helene. So can you imagine? Yeah. We don't have power.

We don't have roads. We don't have Internet. We have almost no contact with the outside world. The first day my cell phone sort of kinda starts working, I get a phone call telling me that my brother has just overdosed. Mhmm.

Right? And so perspective to what year was this? This was last year. This was September 2024. Okay.

So the hurricane was on September 27. He died October 9. Mhmm. Right? So all of this.

And I had to make an immediate decision of while we're still trying to get our basic needs met, who am I going to be in the face of this level of grief and overwhelm, what version of me is going to show up Right. To process what's happening. Right. This is, I think, one of the most important questions that I ask my clients, you know, or that I work with my clients around, and I think it's the most important question we can ask ourselves, who are we and who am I going to be in the face of this, of this trauma, of this tragedy, of this loss, of this grief, of of 123 personalities that my mother's bringing forward? It's a really, really important question.

And I think that that really can free us up when we consciously choose who we're going to be. But what made it possible for you to even ask that question? Or maybe you know that, maybe you don't know that. Well, I sort of know that. Part of it is practice, right?

I've had a lot of trauma, so I've had a lot of practice deciding how I'm going to show up. And the second is I remember maybe on day three after the hurricane, I'm sitting in the dark in our living room with my husband and I'm saying, I like, I don't I'm still grieving my brother Alex dying. Right? I've got to figure out how to run my online business without power of the Internet. Like, there's a lot going on and I don't I don't wanna have to deal with all this stuff and Jeff, who lived through hurricane Helene and or hurricane Katrina rather in 02/2005, so twenty years ago, looks me in the eye and says, you need to figure it out because we are in this for the long haul.

This is going to take months, if not years. And so his lived experience of, in this case, a natural disaster helped me see the bigger perspective. Yes. Yes. And I would venture to say that if I think about your brothers, for example, like I think that they weren't able to see that.

Mean, this is all speculation, of course, but they weren't able to see that to be able to get enough distance, to get enough perspective, to be able to see that who I'm being in the face of this is impacting my life and my relationships and Yeah. Yeah. You'd agree with that. Mhmm. Yeah.

I would and I would say they made decisions pretty early on. Alex was six. When the first time he said that he wanted to die. Right. That he'd to end his own life.

And then Bryce started using very using drugs very significantly when he was 12 and had his first overdose. They were making choices towards death rather than life pretty early on. Right, right, exactly. So you wrote I pulled out some quotes that really grabbed me. You wrote, people who experience sexual abuse as children can create an association between love and abuse.

And I'm curious what you're, you know, tell them, I want to hear more about that. What have you seen as the impact when that happens? When there's an association between love and abuse, what's the impact to your life? Yeah. That's a great question and I think that particular reference was I in a chapter about my grandmother.

So, my grandmother sexually abused me. She also sexually abused my mother. She was also sexually abused by her grandmother. So we've got generations, a lineage of women abusing women. Mhmm.

A kind of couching it in love, right? This is what a parental figure does. They love you but they also violate you. Mhmm. Right.

So that's the context that that quote came from. Right. Right. So then how did that how did this association between love and abuse impact you? How did that live through you in your life?

If you don't wanna answer any question, just tell me. Not at I mean, for sure, it played out in my relationships with men because I assumed that I didn't deserve any better than negligent attention. Mhmm. Right? And I have several examples of relationships that I had with men for years where they they did not see me for who I was and would not acknowledge me or my gifts.

And I simply thought, oh, let me try harder. Let me love more. Maybe if I just work harder, eventually, they'll see me and they'll love me for who I am. Right, right, right. And then what allowed you to, know, because I don't think that you could have the relationship that you have now if you continued with that association.

So what shifted for you that made it possible for you to break that association, to free yourself from that association so you could be available? Did you have to become in order to be available for love, healthy love? Right. Yeah, and I met my husband Jeff when I was 45 years old. So just think about all of the processing and healing that happened up until that point.

And I made a decision that what I had been doing that got me into these relationships, that had me stay in these relationships wasn't working. So I started asking myself, what would be the opposite of what I have been doing that might get me a different result? And what I decided, I don't know how conscious it was at the time, but what I decided is I am not going to compromise anything about who I am. Right? I'm not going to kowtow.

I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm not going to try to convince anyone else that they should be in a relationship with me or be the version that I think would work for them. I just decided to show up fully as myself. As you. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I've talked about that a lot with my clients too. When you show up wearing a mask and the mask is, for example, if I love you enough and if I give enough and if I take care of you enough and I do all of this, then you'll love me back. There's a mask of, you know, I'm, who I am inside of that. And you take that mask off and you're going to attract a different person. Yeah, 100.

Right? Because if your partner, Jeff, I'm imagining wasn't available for you to do all of that caretaking. I think you even said he's taking care of you. He's taking care of Right? There's a difference there.

So that's really, really beautiful. And I think it's a very it's something that I really want my listeners to I wanna highlight that because it's so important to how you're showing up and be yourself. You're gonna attract, someone different than if you're wearing a mask because the person who you're attracting when you're wearing a mask is looking for that mask. Even if it's unconscious, they're looking for which isn't even you. Yeah, exactly.

And being willing to receive. I mean, Jeff, one of the biggest fights we had at the beginning when we were dating just in the first couple of months was he was saying, I just want to spend time, more time with you and I literally said to him, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, right? I had no context for that. Exactly. Right.

Exactly. So what did you have to do to let to let that in, to let it soften you in some way? Because these are protections that we have know, that we hold it. So what did you do to are you aware? Well, Jeff taught me a lot about how to be in a relationship.

Yeah. He would kind of because I had no reference point for healthy, intimate relationship. Right. So he taught me a lot about, you know, how it's okay to receive support. So for example, the house we're living in now.

I was gonna say let's hear about Linda. Yes, we bought this 1978 yellow Cape Cod house on the top of a mountain and we gutted it double the size and built this beautiful modern mountain home. And I'd never owned a house bought a house, refinished a house, built a house, any of that. But my mother-in-law, Jeff's mom, Linda had built six of her own houses. And so as we're realizing that we're going to buy this property and that we want to rehab it.

Jeff says to me well why don't we get my mother involved because she has lots of experience and I said to him, why would she want to do that, you know that doesn't make any what what would be the benefit for her? It's gonna be a lot of work. Hold on before you before you continue with that. I just wanna I wanna pinpoint that because that why would she wanna do that is inside of a a lens that you're looking through is that my family, nobody's helping me. I've got to do it all on my own.

Yeah. Continue. That's exactly what it was because my family didn't help. Right? And then Linda and I spent months together working on every single aspect of this house and it was very healing for me to be with someone who wanted to support me without expecting anything in return.

That was a shocking experience for me. Right. Right. Right. Right.

You talk about I mean, okay, wait, let me back up because I really want to acknowledge that. So with it being a shocking experience, it's a shock to your system in a way. Like, wait a minute. It can in the beginning almost be like, did you ever watch Danger Will Robinson Danger? Do you remember that show?

I can't remember what it was. But it's like, wait a minute, this is not how life is. This is not how other people show up for people. Only I'm the one that shows up and nobody else is there to take care of me. It's a lens, right?

And so in that shock, was there a specific thing that shifted that allowed you to let that really in as being real or did it take time? I think what I realized that that Linda was having fun with the house rebuild, that really helped shift things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You could let it in then. Yeah. Yeah. And so we've been talking a little bit about you always found yourself in the role of the responsible one, being the one taking care of your family. And then you have this experience of somebody taking care of you, a couple of people taking care of you, being there for you, how do you relate to being responsible for your life today versus back then when things were put on you?

And now you still have responsibilities and there's still people in your life and you're still going down to the, you know, when the, when the hurricane happened to say, how can I help? So what, but what, what's different for you around responsibility? I'm accompanied in all of my responsibility. So personally, of course, I've got Jeff and his family, friends, colleagues, that kind of thing, but also in my business. I have a team supporting the work that I'm doing in my business And I no longer think about having to do everything myself.

My immediate thought is who can help me do this? Mhmm. So I don't isolate anymore in that response. What was the thought back then? Today, it's who can help me do this?

And back then, it was what? Because these are the It was. I'm all alone. Have to figure it out myself. Yeah.

I'm all alone. And this is this is kind of the work that I do too, Emma, at the level of identity is is just to give some perspective for my listeners too, is when there's trauma involved, we decide something about who we are. And so now in that, there's the I'm alone. I'm alone is a lens to look through life. I've got to do it all myself.

And then the new lens is who can help me, of course. All I have to do is ask and people are going to show up for me. I'm not alone. I'm here with myself. Right.

You know, and I'm the one who discerns who is going to be in my life or not. And it's going to be based on, you tell me if this is in the right direction. It's going to be based on who's actually showing up for me. Yeah. You know?

Who deserves it? Who deserves what? To be in relationship with me. Exactly. Can you and and to the readers, I know you know this but to the listeners that feel the difference of I'm all alone.

I have to do this all myself. And who deserves to be in my life? They have to show that they're showing up for me in order to have the privilege of being in my life. Two different realities, but based only and solely on the perspective and the lens that you're looking through. Yep.

Would you add anything to that? Very well put. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I'm remembering reading your book when you needed driver's license to help me, and now this is I need a driver's license to even help. Like you needed that to help.

And your teacher refused, and you wrote, that was one of the few times I directly asked an adult for help with my family and I was turned down. That reinforced that I was on my own. Yep. And so there it is. That belief system then gets reinforced over time and over time, and I'm alone, I'm alone.

See, I'm alone. Right? I'm alone. And then you've worked with a lot of people who have gone through trauma. So what do you see around this when survivors of trauma do ask for help?

Yeah, in terms of their fear around asking for help or what because the work that I do is at that level of identity, who am I in the face of this? So what do you see, coming from? Can you see that if they don't ask for help or do ask I for just want your perspective on what's happening with people when, and maybe the lens that they're looking through when they do or don't ask for help. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I saw it a lot after Hurricane Helene.

I live in rural Appalachia and so there are mountain people here, many of whom have been here for generations, And there's this kind of assumption that we take care of our own, we just do what needs to be handled. So there was first an assumption that no one is coming to save us. And that even if they come, they're not going to give us the support that they need. And we're not going to trust it because we don't know those people. So their whole orientation is people won't help you.

And if they try to help you, they're out for something. And that's a cultural orientation that happens here in rural Appalachia, which I find fascinating, right? To watch people who went through the same disaster and who was asking for help and then who was willing to receive help because it happens on that the level of help someone's able to receive really differs based on their orientation to the world. Right. Right.

So what stops them from asking for help is also their orientation to the world, their perspective. You know, and I'm I'm also looking at one of the things that I really want, my mission in life, I say it a little bit like, an impossible mission is to end childhood sexual abuse. Like I'm taking a stand for this in the work that I'm doing, and I know that it's an insurmountable task. And so even with that, though, I'm wondering if you have any insight into how we can make sure that children get the help that they need. Because I remember my own experience.

I would never have said I mean, my mom was asking me all the time, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? And I never did tell her, oh, my dad's sexually abusing Right? I'm not going to ask for help.

But what I mean, I can remember all these things going through my mind so quickly and like that and just being completely mute, like having my throat area just quiet. Yeah. Right? And you know, the blame, the shame, the you know, like it's my fault, this, all of the, you know, things that you could imagine were happening in my life. But now, I don't know how I want your perspective on how we can what we can do.

Who do we need to be in this world to get, to make it so that children get what they need and so that they can ask for help so that they are safe? Just your perspective on that would be wonderful. Absolutely. Well, I think it has to do with education and destigmatization, both for sexual abuse as well as for suicide, because I'm a big advocate on not having so much stigma around suicide. And I'm thinking about my friend who actually lives here in the same community, Julia Pierce, who just wrote a book, a children's book called My Body is Sacred, where she talks about vaginas.

And what vaginas look like and what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior with vaginas. It's like very basic. It's a beautiful book. Very basic education around what what is appropriate for that of your body. And I love it because it educates those very young children who may not have the language otherwise.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tony Kavanaugh wrote a book, like a pamphlet. This is a real, you know, and it, oh, I can't remember the name of it right now, but it gives adults the perspective of what's normal and natural and healthy in children's sexuality and what's kind of like something to pay attention to and the signs of when to get help.

And she separates it out in age groups as well because it's different for each age group. So I'm going to get this book that you just recommended, My Body is Sacred for my grandchildren. Wonderful. Oh, yeah. Wonderful.

Thank you so much. And I also think, I mean, you and I are probably around the same age. I'm 51. And when we were growing up, there were a lot of things you didn't talk about that are much more kind of in our culture today and more available to us around sexual abuse and around suicide. Yeah, absolutely.

And I want to make it just like you and what you shared, normalizing the conversation so that we can talk about it. Parents don't know what to do or what to say or how to say it. And so we need to educate ourselves for sure. So I love that. The more education we have around this and understanding, then the more equipped we are to keep our children safe.

Yeah, absolutely. You wrote when you were, I think you were 16 when you wrote this, that you decided to abandon yourself and become who your mother needed to be. This is such a common thing that I heard. I'll be who I need you to be. I've certainly done that in my own life.

And, you were saying that you believed you were saving your family by ignoring your own needs. Again, that's so common. So, when did you start reclaiming yourself from that? You know, I think there were sacrifices you probably needed to make. I'm thinking of some of the things I read in your book around letting your family go.

How did you find your way back to yourself? Yeah, I really did have to let my family go. I had to stop being in relationship with my mother and even my brothers who wanted to be in relationship with her because I didn't want them to have to choose. So I simply deselected myself from dynamic the so that I could focus on my own healing. And I'm sure there are other ways to do it.

A lot of people talk about the importance of forgiveness and I touch on this in the book. I don't think forgiveness always has to mean reconciliation. Absolutely. And I actually think that's kind of bullshit. It puts a lot of responsibility on the person who is choosing to heal.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I will say that in my own experience, I confronted my father before I got married because I realized, uh-oh, I'm going to have kids, so I'm going to need to make sure that this doesn't happen to them. And that's when he went into therapy and got help and we repaired our relationship. But what I learned from that experience is that the impact of what happened still stayed with me. And I think that from the work I've done, I've seen that a belief can be that if there's healing that takes place with the family, then that means the trauma disappears?

No, it doesn't. It's definitely a misunderstanding or an idea that maybe contributes to how we're showing up in life with blaming or if that didn't happen, then or if I had the healing you had, Layla, with your father, then I wouldn't have any of these problems in my adult life. No. It still has to be something you go through and heal on your own. It's still your own process, and I still had to go, Who am I going to be in the face of what happened to me?

Even with the healing that took place. So that's, I think, an important thing for us to, or for my listeners, to be able to really see that it's not, that doesn't solve anything. It makes it a little easier, but it doesn't solve anything. Still have to do the work. You wrote, maybe I'm psychic or maybe I'm more in touch than many people because of my years of trauma and this is something that I've seen is that people who have experienced trauma have kind of a sixth sense, an intuition.

So I want to hear how, if you have awareness around how trauma shaped your intuition, you know, or you can share about being psychic or around intuition, or maybe they're connected. I just want to hear what your experience was around that a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, I think initially trauma makes all of us very hyper vigilant, right? We're always looking for where is the danger or what's going to happen next.

We've got our spidey senses out, paying attention and kind of observing the room and we do it so much it becomes unconscious to us and we do it not just in our family but in every situation. And so a lot of people who are traumatized the way they pick up on information is they will feel what the other person is feeling. They'll feel their emotions. They'll feel their kind of state of being. And that's how they translate is there danger in the room or not?

And that can be exhausting. So I of course was doing that in childhood and then I started realizing that I could do it with people outside of my family. And it became very well developed, meaning that I could see people who were no longer alive. I could kind of walk into a building and know what had happened in that building, that kind of thing. So I really had to learn how to create healthy boundaries for myself in terms of what I wanted to experience and what was my own versus what was going on for some Right, so then that's the psychic part and then you also have intuition that can guide you.

I've talked about this on a few of my other episodes, but I remember this experience that I had with I was in a workshop, we had buddies, and we would go and do our things in the workshop, and then we would come back and debrief with our buddy. And when we were choosing buddies, I remember seeing this man out of the corner of my eye, and I knew he was coming towards me to be my buddy. He did. We became buddies. During the event, he was sharing about something.

I don't even remember what it was. But I just all of a sudden said, asked him, I said, have you ever raped anyone? Woah. He got so angry, so defensive, so upset. And later that weekend, he attacked one of the women in the group.

Oh my gosh. And so there's that there was just something. He just something that vigilance, right? I could feel it on my like, little hairs on the back of my neck were on alert. Like, I did not trust this man from the moment I felt him in the room.

And you know, so that's one of my experiences of that intuition, you know, guiding me to say, Stay away from this person or whatever. Sense of danger. Something like danger. Well, good on you for asking him directly. Woo.

That was weird. Yeah. But yeah, I would never have to see his reaction, you know, valuable for me and just really being able to trust my own intuition and saying, yes, I am a really good today, right? I can say, I'm a really good judge of character. I have a really heightened sense of who's safe and who's not safe.

And that was developed over time. I'm curious, in your experience as being a hospital chaplain, is that when you were working in hospice or was that something It was both. It was both a trauma chaplain in a hospital and then also later home hospice. Yes. What most impacted you about being with people in their hardest moments?

So the big joke at the both of the hospitals was that people love to die around me. Like I would go on for a twenty four hour shift and they would start dropping like flies. I don't mean to be Yeah. But it was even where the ER doctors would be like, hey, Emma. What's your schedule this coming week?

Because I wanna make sure I'm not working the same hours that you're working. Right? It was that level of people just felt safe in my presence to transition. And that was a phenomenal experience. And then of course I had that going into home hospice as well helping people to make the one of the two most significant transitions in their lives, right?

Being born and dying. Yes, yes. I've had some pretty incredible experiences around that too. If we had time, we'd talk about them. In your memoir, you said that after meeting Jeff, you lost here's the quote.

I lost interest in my trauma symptoms. Revisiting them began to bore me, and I had been more interested in living life and being fully present. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Yeah, because there's so much life to live when you're not coming at life from the perspective of who's gonna hurt me next.

Right. Right. How how am I going to experience harm? Yeah. How do I need to protect myself?

Yeah. Uh-huh. Are you aware of a moment when that shifted, like a light bulb went on or was it more like a like the boiling water, you know, heating up? It it was when I realized Jeff genuinely wanted to be my protector, That he had my back a 100% and I didn't need to look out for danger anymore. Wow.

What did that do to your nervous system? Yeah. It calmed it. Yeah. Yeah.

And then what's possible for you when you live from a calmed nervous system as opposed to one that's always on alert? Yeah. Everything's possible. You start seeing opportunities. Uh-huh.

That you can't see when you're like looking for this, looking for danger. Uh-huh. Right. When you've got the blinders on. Yeah.

Yeah. When in in your book, you you also write about the four phases of trauma recovery. Can you talk just briefly about that and the phases and how they might relate to, if you can connect them to healthy relationships? If you can't, it's okay. Sure.

Let's see what's possible. Okay, so yeah, the four phases of trauma recovery are in all three of my books. And that's kind of the shape that outline for each of the books looking at from the perspective of being in trauma in real time with Hurricane Helene, then in my memoir, how I went through the four phases of trauma recovery from childhood into adulthood. And then my third book which comes out in June 2026 is on resilient leadership in a volatile world. So it looks at leadership from the perspective of the four phases, which are rescue, recovery, reconstruction and evolution.

So rescue is in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic situation and ensuring that you're getting your basic needs met, that you're attending to your nervous system, that you're finding ways to self regulate. So it could be after an abuse scenario, it could be after a breakup, it could be, you know, something happened in or after a divorce, something happened critically in a relationship that has destabilized you and it's about that process of becoming stable. And then the second phase is rescue where you do an assessment of where you're at and figure out how you want to heal or what you want to create next. Then the reconstruction phase is the actual creation of what is next for you. Then finally in the evolution phase, which not everyone wants to go to is becoming the version of yourself that is resilient so that the next time a traumatic situation happens, it doesn't impact you in the same way because you have a different foundation to start from.

Does that make sense? It absolutely does and what Gly likes going ding, ding, ding, ding for me is when you said not everyone wants to go there, when that's the most important part. I mean, I know they're important, but then that would mean that people want to stay in the victimization or they want like, they they don't want to really take full here's what it is. They don't really wanna take full responsibility for the future that they wanna create. Yep.

You have to do this step phase four. You have to do this phase four in order to have the future that you want. Yeah, where you choose to be a 100% responsible for yourself everything that happens in your Exactly, exactly. And this, I know that you, I'm gonna just name this though, I know you didn't mean this. It doesn't mean that the things that happen to you in life are your fault.

Right. It means what? That you're taking responsibility That you're taking responsibility for your interpretation of what happened. And your reaction to what happened and what you're choosing to do as a result of what happened or not do. You know, Emma, the way that you're seeing this couldn't be more aligned with how I see things and the way that I work.

So I really, really, really appreciate this conversation and having the opportunity to interview you. I'm curious, what vision do you hold for people who have experienced trauma, especially those who wonder if true love is possible for them? Yeah, absolutely. People stop thinking of themselves as those are my dogs in the background. You might hear them.

Yes. Two little dachshunds. People stop thinking of themselves as victims or survivors, but start thinking themselves as resilient human beings. Beautiful, beautiful. That's a big shift.

And absolutely 100% I agree with you. Thank 100%. So thank you so much for this powerful conversation. For our listeners, Emma's memoir Surviving My Mother's 123 Personalities and Transforming a Legacy of Abuse is being released on the twenty eighth. Is that right?

Twenty seventh. Yep. Twenty seventh. Okay. I know your book launch then is on Tuesday the twenty eighth.

You can connect with Emma to find out how to get on to her Zoom if you want to join and for her with her join her for her book launch at 7PM Eastern Time 4PM Pacific 7PM Eastern on the twenty eighth. That's at twenty eighth. And you can find her at Emma e m m a Churchman churchman.com, emmachurchman.com to get the Zoom link or just connect with you. Right? Yes.

Yeah. And to register for the book launch, you can go to emmachurchman.com/unshattered, you'll also see links there to order the book. Wonderful. And you can get the book through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org. And you also said that you had a free gift for everyone.

I do. Share So Reyland had mentioned earlier that I've got a Trauma Recovery Certification Program. It's in three levels to become certified as a Trauma Recovery Practitioner and I'm giving away the first level for free to you all. So it's a twenty eight day online do it yourself course where you learn how to heal your own trauma. Wonderful, wonderful.

There's the taking responsibility, right? Right there in that. Heal your own trauma. I love it. All right.

So thank you again for being here. Is there anything else that you want to leave us with? Any of your wisdom or final words that you would like to? Yeah, if you're here listening to or watching this podcast, you are in the right place and you're here for a reason and it's because this is the message you needed to hear today. Wonderful, wonderful.

And I would say to everyone who's listening, remember you're not alone. What happened to you does not define you. Healing is possible. Transformation is possible. And love, true, healthy, nourishing love where you feel safe to be yourself is your birthright.

Just have to claim it. Thank you for joining me on this episode of From Trauma to True Love. I honor your courage for being 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.