What is Your Story? Your Voice is important.

A friend was contemplating a question in her desire to do a TED Talk “What is your story?” She sat not knowing what she could say about herself. Feeling she had no story to tell.

After a brief pause, I looked at her and spoke for five minutes with all the words and stories she had told me of her life and journey. She smiled and laughed, “well you made that sound easy.”

I believe it is so often easier to see someone else’s growth journey and process than it is our own. We each get stuck along the way in moments hard to let go of, that become our identity while we learn to grow and move on from them if we choose to do the work.

She then looked at me and said, “What is your story? When will you start sharing?” She knows my past story, and knew to nudge me in opening up to help others. When you meet me today, I will start with my current life story. I am a Reiki Master teacher, Past Life practitioner, and channeling author with over 20 year’s experience in energy work.

She continued to push me gently to go back to the beginning of my story, as I had just done with her life. She knew I needed to be open and share my background story to reach people and help them understand that life was not always the peaceful life I have today.

I have said so often in the process of my healing journey. “Unbeknownst to me, my sex life began before I was three” when a male cousin 10 years older than me was molesting me. One day my paternal grandmother walked in, saw what he was doing and walked away without saying a word to anyone. This was the beginning of my training. I had accepted as a way of life to be used and abused by men and women well into my adulthood. Knowing full well it must have been okay, and I was wrong for not liking what was happening, but no one stopped it, so I believed for a long time there was something wrong with me.

Throughout my life, I succeeded in survival mode by hiding behind denial and tried with so many failures to be “A good girl.” Until I could take it no more, hating the repeated pattern of sexual abuse. I had to choose to wake up and do the hard work to change when someone violently forced me from my home and I ran for my life. How much more could I take? Would I live through the next abusive relationship? I could no longer live a life filled with abuse, use, manipulation, and deception that I hated.

I started down the deep healing journey with some amazing mentors and new friends, who loved and supported me on my journey to living not only in peace and happiness but living a life feeling safe. I had not realized I never felt safe in my home or bed until I opened the door to allow a new way of living. Understanding that feeling safe is a necessary gift of life.

I remember shedding so many tears while letting go of the life I had been trained and accustomed to. In this healing process of living without fear and being open to living safely in gratitude, I could open to the healing gifts before me.

Today, I am blessed to help others let go and heal the wounds often hidden out of fear of what life would be like without them. I live in gratitude and peace for the strength and support I was and am still surrounded with in digging deep and opening up to let go and heal the worst pains I had carried, to live a peaceful, safe, and loving life.

While there is a part of me only wanting to share the best parts of my life now to help others. I also know we must each learn to set free the pains and sufferings of the past to stand in our beauty and love for each other today. In sharing your story, it not only helps you heal, it helps someone else know they are not alone. Honoring your past is just a part of standing in our beauty of today and who we have become.

I would like to share another story shared with me by a beautiful grandmother friend who was full Cherokee. Before she passed well into her 80s, she finally felt safe to talk and healing her painful past in this life. Remember, healing and freedom can come at any age. This will be in my new poetry book “Lost and Found. “

I look forward to hearing your story.

Love and Blessings, Sammi Rae

A Grandmother’s Story

I knew to stay quiet, to keep my mouth shut, to stay unnoticed and unseen

We were taken from our homes for months at a time to be taught the white man’s way

In books and teachings of their God, to remove the “evil heathen” they feared

And told us was in each of us, to be corrected, saving us from hell and damnation

They hated our dark eyes, dark skin, and black hair, even the way we dressed

We were taught to dress their way, speak their language, and learn their God

Not at any moment speaking or being one ounce of who we were before they held us captive

They worked hard every day to make us look, act, and become one of them

Any resistance was met with punishment in the name of their cruel God letting them rule

I lived in fear of what Hell must be like if this was a good way of life

 I was only five, taken from my family to live in this evil place

 With the white ones holding only anger for us all

It was a bitterly cold winter when they worked extra hard to correct the evil

by straightening the black-haired curls of a classmate

Dunking her head repeatedly in the frozen water every morning in the horse trough

 After breaking through the overnight ice before the start of class

 Brushing hard to rip out the curls that proved she was an evil possessed heathen

 They must convert at all cost “saving her soul”

Day after day this went on as she cried, ripping out her hair from the roots

Shivering wet all day in our classroom with no heat, until she came no more to class

Having died of pneumonia alone in her sleep, her hair was just as curly as the day she was born

We had no choice or options of any retaliation, or understanding of why they could be so cruel

If we spoke up or out against them, we would be stuck in the corner with a bar of lye soap

 Forced into our mouths until it bubbled and foamed, choking on the spit and vomit

Until death consumed another little friend of mine also

With her back to us, facing the wall, dying alone in the corner in a room full of students

I learned early on to stay quiet, unspoken, and unnoticed, accepting abuse as a way of life

 No more, I am 88, proud and finally safe to tell my story