#SaturdaySpotlight is on Jessi Beyer & How to Heal

Good Morning and Happy New Year!

I hope your holidays have been blessed and 2022 is most prosperous for you and yours.

Please welcome my new friend, Jessi Beyer as she shares with us a peek into her book, How to Heal which gives us practical, natural therapies to use to heal from trauma.

The National Council for Behavioral Health estimates that seven out of every ten people you know will experience a trauma during their lifetime – perhaps even you. When that happens, though, what do you do? For speaker and mental health advocate Jessi Beyer, it meant doing nothing and avoiding therapy like the plague. What she did not know, though, is that there were alternatives to talk therapy. You could spend time with horses, go on a walk through the woods, or dance your way through healing. If you are moving through your trauma healing journey and are looking for an alternative to talk therapy, then you have landed in the right place. 

How To Heal details nine natural and integrative therapy methods that can be a powerful addition to your healing journey: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Craniosacral Therapy, Mindfulness and Meditation, Dance-Movement Therapy, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, Equine-Assisted Therapy, Canine-Assisted Therapy, Ecotherapy and Nature-Based Therapies, and Flower Essence Therapy. 

Written by a fellow trauma survivor, How To Heal includes information beyond the therapies to help you understand what trauma is, how it affects your life, and how you can help someone who struggles with a past traumatic experience.

Excerpt: My Experience with Trauma can remember the exact place I was standing when I noticed the scars on my friend’s inner forearm. It’s a moment that’s burned into my memory, and it probably always will be. When I asked him if he had a cat, I was desperate nothing more than playful scratches. Unfortunately, my intuition was correct. This is where my story begins. 

It took a few weeks for him to open up to me about his personal struggles. I was a teenager at the time, and from that point onward, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. In actuality, it was the weight of his world that I placed on my shoulders. Over the next year and a half, I became his confidante. Every time he struggled, he called me. Every time he hurt himself, he called me. Every time he got stuck in his head, he called me. I believed I was responsible for protecting his 2 privacy and honoring his trust in me, which meant I was lying to my mom, lying to his mom, and lying to my school’s counselor. At the time, I was so thankful. I felt important, and I felt like I was making an impact. I felt like I was responsible for his happiness and mental health, and I felt like a success because I believed I was maintaining it. I believed I was the reason he was staying alive. 

It turned out I wasn’t bringing him up, he was dragging me down. I remember the first time I cut myself. It was August 12, the day before soccer season. I remember the second time I drew blood when I cut. I called him because I freaked out, and I remember he told me that it would become easier each time I did it. I remember being calmed down by him saying that. I also remember all of the times I gave him my body to kiss, to feel, and to be on top of because I misguidedly believed that if I kept him happy, he would stay alive. I remember being proud of the fact that I would do literally whatever it took for him to stay alive. 

I made him promise me that he would give me a hug before he took his own life. It was my way of having some control over the situation so I could stop it, but I told him it was so that I could hold him while he left this earth. I remember the exact moment that he texted me and told me to come give him a hug and say goodbye. I was eating some chicken in my kitchen, and I was the only one home. My parents were still at work. I vividly remember dropping the chicken on the counter and falling to the floor when I received that text, but the drive to his house is a complete blur. I know I was speeding. I know I majorly cut someone off getting off the highway....

Jessi Beyer is an award-nominated international speaker and the #1 best-selling author of How To Heal: A Practical Guide To Nine Natural Therapies You Can Use To Release Your Trauma. Named a 2020 “Young Entrepreneur to Watch” by IdeaMensch, she has been featured in over 160 media outlets, including Thrive Global, Refinery29, and Elite Daily, and has spoken to thousands of people around the world through groups like Penn State University, Leadercast NOW, and the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma’s international summit. Outside of her professional life, Jessi is an MA candidate in critical psychology and human services at Prescott College and a K9 search and rescue handler with her dog, Phoebe.

Find out more about Jessi and this incredible book by visiting her website. Download a free copy of How to Heal HERE.

Oh my Jessi, what an intriguing excerpt! Your book sounds amazing and is sure to help millions of people! We certainly wish you the best of luck and God's blessings in this new year.

Hope you'll grab a copy of Jessi's book and that you'll drop by each week as we bring you new authors and books as well as reconnect with some old friends here on Wednesday Words with Friends and Saturday Spotlight.

Until next time take care and God bless.

PamT