Resurfacing...

Where have I been? What have I learned? Where's this site heading?

At this point in my life, as I'm writing this, I'm now 48 years old. I grew up in a relatively wealthy home, attending private schools. Therein I was taught everything from Baptist to Episcopalian beliefs. I then graduated from a Christian college during which I got a good dose of Pentecostalism. I also gained my love of doing volunteer work here and since then have volunteered for both animal and homeless shelters, mostly homeless shelters.

I've been through a lot in my life. In fact, I said to my son the other day, "I've had a hard life." Unfortunately this is true. Not only have I gone through 45 years of "child" abuse intermixed with 6 years of domestic violence, but now my son and I have been homeless for what'll amount to 3 months during which we've gone through a lot of hellacious events.

I don't say any of this to get pity. I say this to share what I've learned so far in my life, which is this...

There comes a point where you eventually make peace with this world. For me that has somewhat of a religious connotation (shouldn't be surprising since I am a chaplain). I'm sharing it here in hopes of bringing some peace to other's lives, but if you're not a religious person, you may want to stop reading now and check out the last 2 paragraphs.

For those of you who are continuing to read...

I was brought up with a bunch of Christian beliefs (e.g., Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Evangelical) so this has come as a bit of a surprise to me but after having started my life over at least 3 times (not counting the over 10 times that I've moved residencies) I've come to the point that stuff no longer matters to me. Here I'm talking about physical items. Instead, the only things I care about are people, animals, and my own mental space.

As I started exploring my mental space I underwent a period of restlessness. My main struggle was with "Why would God put me through so much crap in my life?" It just didn't make sense that a loving God would let their child suffer so much. Somehow also during this time I was reading about reincarnation and deep within my spirit it began to resonate. I've come to believe not only in reincarnation but that we get to choose the next life we live, what we'll experience in our lifetime.

While these beliefs have given me great peace, I still don't know why I'm here but will be moving to Illinois soon. I've recently had a Tarot reading done that states that it's my time to put things I've learned in life to work. Hopefully, that means that I'll have more time to dedicate to this site and being an advocate for people who have been abused as children and adults (mainly focusing on the traumas I've been through: addiction, homelessness, child abuse, and domestic violence).

Originally I thought about teaching classes and offering life coaching services, but I'm feeling more led to work in advocacy. This doesn't mean that I won't offer classes/coaching at some point in the future but for now this is the direction this site is heading and I just wanted to share with you a little about where I've been, what I've been through, and where we're heading. I hope you'll stick around and support the work that I'm doing here at Healing Family Trauma Pittsburgh.