Laura Davis - Beyond ‘The Courage to Heal’
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
Release Date: 11/09/2021
Sexual Healing Affirmations
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this episode, Molly shares a meditation originally released on the podcast “Meditations,” by her friend Gregory T. Obert in May of 2019. We are happy to share this recording here, where you’ll hear a set of sexual healing affirmations, ready by Molly and repeated several times in a loop. You may prefer to listen to this meditation in a quiet and private space to take them in. If you’d like to hear these same affirmations read by Gregory, you can find his podcast and look for the episode released on May 26, 2019 on the “Meditations” podcast by Gregory T. Obert. ...
info_outline
Amy Dawn on Navigating the Criminal Justice System
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this episode, Molly interviews Amy Dawn about how she navigated the criminal justice system after deciding to press charges against the man who raped her. Some key highlights include: How Amy found herself in a role reversal from criminal justice student to someone navigating the system, and the challenge she experienced coming to terms with being a rape survivor. Her decision to report and then to pursue legal action. Disclosure and allowing other people’s reactions to impact how we feel about ourselves and what happened to us. Victim blaming, objectification, and dehumanization...
info_outline
Amy Collins--A Survivor of Things Meant to Break Her Spirit
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this episode Molly interviews Amy Collins, a survivor of things that were meant to break her spirit. Being honest with her past has helped her heal in so many beautiful ways. She believes in staying true to who she is and doing what’s best for her healing. In this interview, she shares her recent experience being in recovery from addiction, an eating disorder, and PTSD and the power of groups, among other things, in her relatively recently begun healing journey. -------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE to the show to be the first to hear about new episodes! ...
info_outline
The Role of Touch in Healing from Sexual Trauma
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
“Many sexual trauma survivors went into a freeze state.. And so there’s this sense of ‘My body betrayed me, and I don’t want to be in this body, but I’m stuck here, so I’m going to do the best job I can to not be here.’ And that is the ultimate disconnection. So what we’re going for is to start to reconnect that, just a little bit at a time, maybe at first just with questions and guidance, and little by little, help you start to recognize that your body is an ally in this process of healing. And in fact, because it was the site of the crime, it’s also the site of immense...
info_outline
Anne Jensen on religious & sexual abuse, disclosure, and healing intimacy
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
“I’m still struggling with ‘my body is my own’... It really does make me angry because it feels like I’m missing out on this wonderful thing that you experience with a partner.” In this episode, Molly interviews Anne Jensen, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse within a religious cult, shares her journey over the past several years after disclosing the abuse to her family. She discusses how the process of disclosing was retraumatizing for her, how she started doing the true work of healing when she was truly ready, the role of religion & purity culture in her silencing...
info_outline
Sarah and Molly on What Consent Really Means
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this conversation, Molly and regular special guest Sarah Brennan discuss consent in and out of the bedroom, fear of rejection (being rejected and/or rejecting someone else), and how communicating clear boundaries begets trust. -------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE to the show to be the first to hear about new episodes! Contact Sarah: www.theembodyconnection.com // [email protected] Contact Molly: www.theembodyconnection.com // Washington Post Article: Consent is not enough. We need a new sexual ethic. By Christine Emba:...
info_outline
Phil Goldstein shares his perspective and poetry
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
“I like to think that I grew up in a relatively progressive area of the country… but I definitely, by osmosis, absorbed the cultural expectations and ideas of what a man is and should be, and it was definitely not somebody who’d been sexually abused or taken advantage of. And I think that was another factor inhibiting me from talking about it - just not wanting to deal with the consequent shame and humiliation that I’m sure would have come.” Phil is a poet, journalist, and content marketer whose debut poetry collection, How to Bury a Boy at Sea, will be published by Stillhouse...
info_outline
Lauren Dollie Duke on Her Memoir Sh!thouse, a memoir of a brutal girlhood
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
“A lot of the work that I’m doing now is because of what happened in the backseat of that car... I would be lying if I said that that is resolved... I am recognizing that I still have a freeze response… It’s taken me nine years of resisting that there was still work to be done from that - because I didn’t want to investigate it… I lived with a very, very deep sense of shame until the last few years… The event plus the shame created this shut-down - a lack of circulation, a lack of life, a lack of movement in the middle part of my body… And even though I couldn’t articulate...
info_outline
Sarah and Molly on why (y)our emotions are okay
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this conversation, Molly and regular special guest Sarah Brennan share their thoughts and experiences with big emotions, including “overreacting,” acting out/bad behavior, being labeled as “too emotional” or “too sensitive,” self-shaming, shutting down – and ultimately building the capacity to tolerate those big scary emotions with compassion for yourself and others. They also discuss triggers and how they manage them, the question of how to communicate about big feelings, how (and whether) to explain the experience of physical violation, and ultimately, what it means to face...
info_outline
Dr. Rhonda Sherrod on Surviving, Healing, and Evolving in response to early childhood sexual abuse
Beyond MeToo: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Trauma
In this episode, Dr. Rhonda Sherrod shares insights from her own healing journey from early childhood sexual abuse, which she also shares in her recently published book, “SHE - Surviving Healing & Evolving: Essays of Love, Compassion, Healing, and Affirmation for Black People.” A passionate educator and sought after public speaker, Dr. Sherrod previously taught undergraduate and graduate psychology at two HBCUs. She is now the president of The Need To Know Group where she conducts professional development trainings for educators, devises communication strategies for entrepreneurs, and...
info_outline“When I wrote The Courage to Heal, if you had asked me who I was at that point in my life, I would’ve said ‘I’m an incest survivor,’ and that would have been it. I didn’t have any other identity. I was consumed by it, and it felt like my life had been destroyed by it and that I would never recover. So many decades later, I’m in such a different place that if you asked me, ‘Who are you?’, I would say ‘I’m a teacher, I’m an author, I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother, I’m a swimmer, I’m a hiker, I’m a friend, I’m a sister.’ ‘Incest survivor’ wouldn’t even be on the list, and it’s because that experience, with many other experiences, is in the fabric of the cloth that shaped me, but it’s so in the background now.”
Laura Davis is a six-time bestselling author. Her books, including The Courage to Heal and I Thought We’d Never Speak Again have been translated into 11 languages and sold 1.8 million copies. Laura leads writing workshops in the U.S. and internationally that focus on writing as a tool for healing and transformation.
Laura’s new memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story is the riveting story of her embattled relationship with her mother Temme, their determination to love one another, and the dramatic and surprising collision course they ended up on at the end of Temme’s life. For the millions of readers of Laura’s first book, The Courage to Heal, The Burning Light of Two Stars is both prequel and sequel, revealing in page-turning, intimate detail how Laura reconciled with the mother who betrayed her, and came to care for her in her final days.
You can read the opening chapters here: https://lauradavis.net/the-burning-light-of-two-stars/
SUBSCRIBE to the show to be the first to hear about new episodes!
Contact Laura: www.LauraDavis.net // FB: @thewritersjourney // IG: @laurasaridavis
Contact Molly: [email protected]
Special thanks to:
Jenn Baykan, virtual assistant for creatives: https://www.jbaykan.com/
Dave Hiltebrand for intro and outro music original composition: https://www.davehiltebrand.com/
Gina McLaughlin Photography for photo and graphic design: https://www.facebook.com/ginamclaughlinphotography/?fref=tag