Excerpted from "From Hell to There"

“Excerpted from a new book by Kellie Fitzgerald titled ‘From Hell to There Rediscovering yourself after abuse, neglect, trauma or grief’”

We’ve all gone through difficult times in our lives. We’ve all lost someone we love. We’ve all felt sad or even depressed at some point. This is a book for those who feel they’ve had more than their share of difficult times, extreme loss and even bouts of depression. For some of us it really does seem like we’ve had to overcome so much more that the bulk of the population. Hopefully this book will help you understand and come to terms with all of that stuff and help you to let it go and move on.

My first memories were not happy ones. That is a huge understatement but I really don’t see the value in going through all that here. I will say that the fact my childhood was not a happy one did put me on a path to making choices that would ensure my early adult life was not happy either. Funny how that happens.

Honestly I just never fit in anywhere. The fact that I could see spirits and often knew what was going to happen before it did happen did nothing at all to help me fit in anywhere. Add in my extremely sensitive nature and quiet personality and I was destined to remain on the fringe of public school society. Often I found that the few friends I made were the ones talking most about how odd I was. That this would continue throughout my entire life eventually made me learn to simply not care. Today, my inner circle of friends can be counted on one hand. I’m OK with that.

My point here is not to just tell you my story. I do not believe my story is that different from anyone else’s story. So many of us have grown up in dysfunctional families with or without substance abuse and without the support we really should have grown up with. Often we’ve grown up with one or even several step-parents and step-siblings. One of my brothers is known to tell people that in our family we kids raised ourselves. So, it should be no surprise that each of us has had extreme difficulties in many different areas of our adult lives. I’m certain there are so many others who have raised themselves too. In fact I know there are because I’ve spoken with them through the years. So many people are hurting and don’t even know where the wound is. You simply can’t fix something you don’t know exists.

Actually that is step 1. Realize you do have a wound...or several wounds...that need to be healed.

If you’ve picked up this book I believe you have realized you do have at least a wound or two that need to be healed. Or maybe someone gave you this book and you really don’t. In either case it’s probably a good idea to spend a few minutes talking about identifying those wounds that either you do or do not believe you have.

In my years as a life and spiritual coach I worked with several people who really didn’t believe it was an old wound that was holding them back. There are countless other things they wanted to blame for not being where they wanted to be in life. It was the bad relationship or it was the mean boss or teacher or it was people who were a bad influence. Basically it was everything outside of themselves they felt they had no control over at all. Wrong. You may not have had any control at all over what happened to you, but it is completely within your control, and within yourself, to heal it.

So you think you’d never stay in a physically abusive relationship? Understand, no one wants to be abused. Often those people, especially women, who find themselves in an abusive relationship say it “snuck up on them” or they just didn’t believe what was happening to them.

In my case the guy I was with changed dramatically from a rather sweet and kind, hard-working and loving guy to a monster within a year. While I honestly have no clue at all what was going through his head during that time I do know he began heavy drug use and began to socialize with people who were heavily into that type of activity. We were both very young and had grown up in very dysfunctional families so perhaps it was no surprise he eventually turned to drugs to ease his pain. That certainly did nothing to ease mine, and the constant fear of being strangled or hit at any time only served to further destroy any sense of self-respect or self-esteem that remained after leaving the family I grew up in. I have found this to be a very common thing among survivors of abuse.

Sometimes people can recover quickly and move on as if the abuse never happened. Here’s the thing though, in many of those people the wounds didn’t heal they were just pushed way down and ignored. Often this leads to big problems later in life.

So how in the world do you make sure you’ve actually healed from the trauma you’ve experienced in your life? Well, the first thing to do is to do a deep dive into yourself. Allow that trauma to surface. If tears come with it, let them flow. If you feel nothing at all, that’s fine too. The key is to just let yourself feel whatever you feel. If you find you consistently feel nothing you actually might have deep hidden wounds surrounding earlier trauma.

If you find that describes your situation, by all means find someone to talk to. You might find a counselor will be quite helpful in helping you figure out what you’ve hidden from yourself so that you can heal.

Whether you decide to enter into a counseling situation or to just confide in a trusted friend you need to understand that everyone has encountered trauma in their life and there is no reason to feel shame around yours.

While I am not a licensed counselor, I do help people every day to uncover buried trauma so they can heal and go on to live their fullest lives. I can be reached through my website at www.intuitivemediumkelliefitzgerald.com

Happy healing.