Svava Brooks - Trauma Recovery Coach

Summer is almost here and we are already on month 6 of the year, I can’t believe it. Now is the perfect time to review your healing progress, to check in with yourself and the tools you’ve been using and what’s working for you and what isn’t.

But first, I want to celebrate you for your commitment to your healing. I know it can feel like two steps forward, one step back sometimes. Remember to not focus on what you didn't accomplish. Because that's not important. The only thing that matters is what you did accomplish. I know you had several victories so far (even the smallest changes can be HUGE victories in the healing journey) and I hope you celebrated them. If you haven’t, do that now. You deserve it!

What healing goal did you set for 2019? It’s easy for abuse survivors to forget change is a growth process and that part of healing is to learn to trust the process. The journey is the healing, not just the destination.

Survivors often ask me if...

This month, I celebrate 15 years since I started telling my story in public.

For the first 10 years of my healing, I felt responsible for the abuse I suffered. Since no one else was talking about it, it felt bad, dirty, and shameful. But I was lucky enough to find a support group early on in my healing that helped to change this narrative in my head. I quickly learned that the blame I was feeling was the same blame all of these other survivors were feeling. We all shared the same toxic thoughts about not being good enough or not being able to ask for support. We all had to teach ourselves a new language of hope and healing. I came out of this support group more empowered and certain than ever that the abuse I suffered could have been prevented and it could have been stopped by the adults around me if they had been more informed and more empowered through education. I realized that if the adults around me had known how to talk about boundaries, safe touch, and sex in a healthy and...

Have you heard of the new show, Tidying Up? It features Marie Kondo, the bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and how she brought her decluttering talents to the homes of people needing to organizing their lives.

I started to watch soon after it came out and immediately loved her simple steps for cleaning and decluttering a space.

My husband and I spent a week sorting through different rooms, closets, and cupboards and we got rid of a lot of stuff, things we had held on to for years for no reason! Once we got rid of the things we no longer needed, we were able to reorganize the things we decided to keep and now our apartment feels lighter, cleaner, and more put together.

I can now say, for the first time in my life, I have my socks and underwear folded in a container in an orderly fashion. Who could have guessed that it would feel so good to fold your socks??

Ever since, I have been recommending this show to my family, clients, and my groups. What I...

Healing after years of child abuse and rape takes a long time. I am still a work in progress and each time I find another layer, I welcome it because it is the only way I can work through it to let it go.

Part of my healing journey now is to challenge myself as a human being. After years spent managing internal pain and uncertainty, in survival mode I am on a mission to become the best version of myself. Not perfect, but experience all that life has to offer.

This past weekend, I attended a retreat in Sedona with like minded people. I have been blessed to find a group of entrepreneurs that are both looking to build a successful business and do it with integrity and in alignment with their highest and best good. I have been a part of this group for almost a year now. Just like I recommend to my clients that they find a group or join one of the groups that I provide, I also need a group of peers for encouragement and support and, most importantly, to celebrate our strengths and...

As child abuse survivors, we work really hard to do the best we can with our children. We want them to have what we didn’t. So we try to create a healthy, nourishing environment to help our kids grow and thrive in the best way possible.

But after working all day, sometimes there isn’t much left of us for our children. That used to bother me a lot. I felt like I wasn’t giving my kids 100% of what they needed from me.

Finally, I realized I was trying to give them what “I” felt they needed, not what “they” feel they needed. They didn’t need a mother who ran herself ragged every day, trying to be a supermom. All they wanted was what I needed when I was a child: to be seen, heard, understood, and validated.

How do you make this happen for your children?

You simply do less and listen more. In fact, the less you say the better. Instead, listen intently to whatever your kids want to tell you. Ask questions when appropriate and make...