The Trauma in Our Tissues and How I’m Setting Myself Free

Editorial Staff / 28 seconds
June 19, 2025
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4 min read

Woman meditating with colorful foliage background.

“I feel like I can see with my whole body,” I said to my peer after our last session exchange.

As part of my ongoing growth and development as a practitioner, I regularly participate in somatic therapy exchanges with a small group of peers.

On completion of our last session, I found myself sitting with a sense of a quiet, steady seeing, almost like sitting on the top of a mountain, rooted to the earth, not a breath of wind, and a 360-degree view of not just the world around me but of it within me, and me within it.…

“I feel like I can see with my whole body,” I said to my peer after our last session exchange.

As part of my ongoing growth and development as a practitioner, I regularly participate in somatic therapy exchanges with a small group of peers.

It felt as though I had stepped into a deeper dimension of perception, where sight wasn’t limited to my eyes but woven into my body’s knowing.

It was unfamiliar, but a place where I felt a deep sense of being able to rest. Completely.

I came to her that morning wanting to work on the shock I felt I was still carrying from the day—twelve years ago—when I learned my partner had taken his life. I’ve done a lot of work over the years, but the impact of this moment in time was still untouched.

As we prepared for our session, I felt a fluttering in my chest and a mild contraction behind my heart and upper torso.

“I feel a little fear…” I shared with her, knowing that this was normal and the very reason I had yet to touch how my body had stored the impact of this day.

Often the places we fear the most are exactly where we need to go.

I recalled the memory of traveling down the small bitumen road leading to the gravel driveway of our family home. We lived on two acres in a beautiful community in semirural NSW. My dear friend, who unbeknownst to me had already been informed of what had happened, was driving, as I was five months pregnant and overwhelmed with emotion.

That morning, we had gone to the local police station to report him missing. He had not been answering his phone and had not turned up at work that day. His closest friend had not heard from him, and neither had I.

We all knew something was amiss.

As we turned onto our property, we were met with a row of cars scattered outside the entrance. My breath caught in my chest, my eyes widened and darted, taking in the cars and the close friends walking toward me through the front door. The moment felt so surreal; I knew something was terribly wrong.

There is a moment in time where our nervous system perceives what the eyes have yet to see. A deeper knowing that, much like an animal in the wild who can feel the storm before it arrives, braces itself against the danger afoot.

I don’t know when that initial moment was for me. Whether it was when I spoke to his work and was advised he hadn’t turned up, whe