For years, my bucket list remained untouched, filled with experiences I believed were beyond my grasp. Living with multiple sclerosis (MS) for over two decades had cast a shadow over my aspirations, and one dream in particular, trekking The Narrows at Zion National Park, seemed forever out of reach. However, driven by an unwavering desire, I refused to let doubts and concerns hold me back. With the support of a dear friend who recognized my true capabilities, I embarked on a transformative journey that shattered limitations and proved that the body can achieve what the mind can perceive.A Journey of Belief: The Narrows, known for its captivating beauty and daunting challenges, beckoned to my adventurous spirit. Yet, my own doubts were not the only obstacles I faced. The voices of loved ones, concerned for my well-being, echoed caution in my ears, urging me to forego such daring adventures. However, a glimmer of hope arrived in the form of a dear friend who believed in me wholeheartedly. Encouraged by their unwavering support and their promise to assist me no matter the extent of my abilities, I embraced the opportunity with both trepidation and excitement.The Power of Friendship: As I embarked on the trek through The Narrows, the theme of the Beatles' timeless song, "With a Little Help from My Friends," resonated deeply within me. With every step, the unpredictable currents threatened to knock me off balance. Yet, each time I relinquished my friend's hand, the voice of encouragement and unwavering support echoed through my mind, empowering me to persevere. Their presence gave me the strength to believe in myself and my ability to conquer the seemingly insurmountable.Triumph and Gratitude: As hours turned into moments and the path unfolded beneath my determined feet, a remarkable transformation occurred. Surprisingly, my pace matched that of seasoned hikers, a testament to the resilience that had long remained hidden within me. Overwhelmed by the breathtaking beauty surrounding us, I reached a pivotal moment in the journey. Filled with a kaleidoscope of emotions, I made the decision to pause and retrace my steps, acknowledging the magnitude of what I had already accomplished. Tears of joy streamed down my face, an expression of gratitude for the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream.Lessons Learned: This extraordinary adventure taught me invaluable lessons that will guide me throughout life's challenges. I realized that true belief in oneself, combined with the presence of supportive individuals, can unleash the immense potential within. Selectively sharing my dreams and aspirations with those who nurture and uplift me, I recognized the importance of surrounding myself with individuals who flood my mind with positivity. It became clear that by following my heart and holding fast to unwavering faith, I could transcend limitations and achieve the extraordinary.Conclusion: As I reflect on my transformative journey through The Narrows, I am filled with a renewed sense of purpose and determination. Living with MS may have robbed me of certain opportunities, but it has also fueled a fire within me to defy expectations and surpass perceived limitations. I encourage each and every one of you to embrace the power of belief, surround yourself with those who champion your dreams, and follow your heart unreservedly. For it is through these actions that we can unlock our true potential and accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Conquering The Narrows with the Power of Belief 

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It’s important to know the ACE score but not necessarily the story. Let me explain, since the inception of the ACE’s campaign, I remember sitting across from Nelson Hincapie, who at the moment was president of Voices for Children, and Madeleine Thakur, president of the Children’s Movement S. Florida, and setting the “ground rules” so to speak. This campaign is a massive undertaking and before asking the community to explore their childhood traumas, we needed to think of every possible scenario and how it should be handled. Obviously, privacy is a huge issue. We all knew that once someone disclosed their number, there would be a lot of questions. We also understood that everyone has a different comfort level with disclosing personal information. Take for instance Nelson, who has written about his traumas in a published book and also gave a Ted Talk about it. I, for instance, am just now testing the waters and I’ve found I really only like tip-toeing around the topic. While my stories are mentioning my traumas, I haven’t shared the incidents that contributed to my ACE score, and that’s ok. The stories I have been sharing are pretty much the PG stories of my life. Therefore, you can see the importance of finding one Golden rule that everyone lives by.The Golden Rule is this “No one should have to relive their traumas to prove or explain their score to others.”&nbsp;But why is it important to know the score? It gives us the ability to look at a person and stop judging them and to start understanding that perhaps their actions were because something has happened to them. We become empathetic, and when that happens we tend to want to help instead of judging and pointing the finger. This reminds me of a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting. Specifically, one famous line where the therapist, Robin Williams, tells the patient, Matt Damon, “It’s not your fault.” According to PSYCHALIVE&nbsp;“The line is a response to the revelation of abuse Will endured as a child. At first, Will is dismissive of the statement, but as his therapist steadily repeats “It’s not your fault,” he becomes increasingly agitated. Finally, he erupts into emotion, tearfully allowing the meaning of the words to sink in. This scene is a powerful signification of what trauma can do to a human being. It is also a testament to the importance of anyone who has experienced trauma embracing the irrefutable reality that it is not their fault.”Take for instance the prison system, I recently attended a full-day event surrounding ACEs.The one shocking and definite fact I walked away with was that most incarcerated individuals were once traumatized children. <a href="https://vimeo.com/396225186" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); background-color: transparent;">https://vimeo.com/396225186</a>. My thoughts are this, if we want to stop generational trauma as a society, we need to start with rehabilitative and mental health programs in prison.The beautiful thing is we can individually commit to looking within and exploring the traumas that have affected our lives. I spent all of last year doing it myself and my biggest takeaway was that it’s never too late to invest time and energy into who we aspire to be.&nbsp;Realizing my shortcomings really was the most challenging part, as I just wasn’t aware. Finding that key opened the door to a million possibilities where I learned that we all have the ability to transform and grow from our traumas, but it starts with recognition of them.

Know the number, not the story

<img src="https://images.sitesails.com/1/original/4812c984-9ca9-4bf9-a58f-ba6d9cc5abb7-b9f09b76-ea37-44b2-b081-fa44bcfe3c2b.jpg">Is it that life presents us with opportunities for lessons until we learn them? Or is it that we are stuck in a cycle because we set ourselves up for the same issues due to repetition compulsion? I didn’t even know what the term was until I started going down the rabbit hole of ACEs(Adverse Childhood Experiences) but once I learned about it, it was another one of those moments of sudden insight. According to the American Psychological Association, it is the unconscious need to reenact early traumas in an attempt to overcome or master them. Such traumas are repeated in a new situation symbolic of the repressed prototype. This could be an addiction, relationship choices, or any OCD-type tendencies. Like when a friend always dates the same type of people that are no good for them.In my case, I had to ask myself why I kept repeating some of the same cycles. What I found out was that I was doing it because the problem was so deeply rooted in my subconscious that while I felt it wasn’t the best for me, I continued because it felt familiar and oddly that was comforting. Do you see how detrimental deep-seeded traumas can be on the psyche of a person?&nbsp;Furthermore, repetition compulsion acts as a resistance to therapeutic change since the goal of therapy is not to repeat but to remember the trauma and to see its relation to present behavior. Also called the compulsion to repeat. As determined as I can be, I just wasn’t giving up on the problem and I kept trying to find ways to solve it, except I wasn’t aware that I was doing it therefore I didn’t have a different approach.My usual thought process is that recognizing the problem in every issue that requires self-reflection is the hardest part. Understanding that I was the one setting myself up to experience similar issues was enough to spark change.&nbsp;As I’ve said before, the ACEs campaign started because of the realization that my Multiple Sclerosis was due in large part to my ACE score of 7. That said, I’m still going through the steps of processing my own traumas and while it can be difficult, the reward has been far greater. I feel calmer, problems are easier to deal with and they just don’t affect me as they did before – all great things and the reason I am still on the journey. At the moment, I’m reading Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza. However, my journey of learning about the subconscious mind really started in February of 2022. I’ve since read several books on the topic and I’ll also admit that a lot of the information I stumbled upon came to me through social media, I started following the right sources, and just like that a flurry of digestible information came my way. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’s TED talk was the catalyst for the campaign. You can read about that <a href="https://www.choicemd.com/blog/pandemic-effects-on-adverse-childhood-experiences-ac-es" target="_blank">here</a>.I understand how vital it is to learn new ways to navigate life because I am doing it myself. I’ve suffered the consequences of a high ACE score and I also understand how healing emotionally can help with both body and mind. For me, the proof is in the pudding. When I started the campaign, I was walking with difficulty and using a cane. It’s been one year since I’ve started shedding my traumas and simultaneously I dropped the cane too! I’m not saying that exploring your traumas is a cure all. The realization for me was that stress was causing my MS to get worse and I was walking around as a ball of stress holding onto those traumas and once I worked through them, my stress levels lowered and my health improved. Let’s make this a year of healing because we all deserve to feel happier and healthier.

Repetition Compulsion 

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What I experienced when processing my childhood traumas<img src="https://images.sitesails.com/1/original/2132fe3b-7c48-4a3c-ae5f-0f3ec69b769e-d0671b92-253b-4a6c-b0e8-052ff3abb2b2.jpg">The ACEs campaign I chose to focus on didn’t come to me by accident. On the contrary, it was through kismet or fate. I’ve been very candid about the reasons why I chose to start Choice MD, to help others going through health complications. With my 22 years of experience of living with Multiple Sclerosis, I knew firsthand what it was like to navigate the uncharted waters of a life-altering diagnosis and I also experienced the pitfalls of navigating the healthcare system. Choice MD is my effort to solve many of those issues. I suppose that’s why I was shocked when I stumbled across the ACEs information, a research study conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente of over 14k individuals, confirming that a score of 4 or more adverse childhood experiences would lead to health complications later in life, including autoimmune conditions. WAIT?!! WHAT??! I immediately took the test and found my score to be a 7.&nbsp;At that moment, I melted in my chair into a puddle of tears. My MS could have been avoided? I lost the sensation of my legs when I was 21 years old and since then I’ve literally been stumbling through life as a disabled person. Well, the crying didn’t last long. I suppose because of all the traumatic experiences I had in life, one thing I knew is that if I wanted to move forward with a positive headspace I was going to have to turn the narrative around. Radical acceptance. I wasn’t going to stay the victim so I had to become the hero. Furthermore, initially, I started my research because I wanted to know the outcome of prolonged stress on young children. My little Amelie was having a hard time during the pandemic and I wanted to know how the pandemic would affect all children in the long run. If Choice MD was started to help people, this campaign could essentially save them.<img src="https://images.sitesails.com/1/original/971c7875-e673-4b44-9808-0131eadee8b8-6aacdfb3-3620-4070-8663-89b195545d19.jpg">I hit the ground running with the campaign and as I was attending the Legislative Round-Up by the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce in 2021, I approached former Representative Duran and quickly gained his support. That initial plan was described <a href="https://www.choicemd.com/blog/pandemic-effects-on-adverse-childhood-experiences-ac-es" target="_blank">here</a>, but as quickly as it was evolving I felt I needed to also understand exactly how these traumas were affecting my life.&nbsp;So, I set off on my transformational journey, I had no idea what to expect and while it was possibly one of the most difficult times I had experienced in my life, it was necessary. Here’s a brief description of the process. At the beginning of the year, I attended a week-long retreat where I explored my traumas through three different modalities to create pathways for transformational change. Basically, I spent the week thinking about the stuff I tried hard to bury deep down and then figuring out how those memories were causing me to navigate life in an unnatural manner. For example, I had been held up at gunpoint at a Smoothie King when I was a teenager. I had my back to the door and with the sound of the blenders I had no idea what was going on until I looked around and saw everyone on the floor when I looked up I had a gun pointed at my face. For most of my life, I couldn’t sit with my back to the door. Well, that was just one trauma and it wasn’t even a question on the ACEs test so you can imagine how other traumas were affecting me too.It was an eye-opening experience that lead to many more realizations. I became consumed with the process. Reading books, meditation, attending seminars, breathwork sessions, and following influencers in various topics because after every experience came more clarity and ease of just being myself. This post in particular gave me permission to start over because “You are forced to hurry your process of becoming a human whose personality becomes a cluster of defenses and adaptations. The burdens from the past are carried to your present through your body and brain. And that is what you spend your lifetime re-enacting until you address it at the root level. This is childhood trauma in a nutshell.” – @narcabusecoachI never had the opportunity to just be me or even just focus on me, but it’s never too late to start. I’ll be honest, awareness of the problem was the hardest part of the process. Finding pathways for transformation has been rewarding as I’m finally giving myself the opportunity to discover who I was meant to be, and I like her.

Processing Traumas

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<img src="https://images.sitesails.com/1/original/6cb2fe38-356e-49e4-8aae-e0a464233cc6-e7c31843-dd78-4e98-9ddf-2f45a2f2a30f.jpg">I stumbled across the information for our ACEs campaign when I was doing research on how to manage my daughter’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic started my little one was in kindergarten and she went from having several playdates a week to none. Furthermore, she experienced the additional fear of living with someone who was considered to be in the vulnerable population, myself, because of my Multiple Sclerosis. As the months progressed, Amelie developed a fear of being alone and in dark places. To make matters worse, she saw a few episodes of the cartoon Jurassic Park and developed a morbid fear of one of the characters, Indominus Rex. Her nightmares had me sleeping in her room, that is, if she wasn’t in mine. In hindsight, it made perfect sense. She was scared of the unknown. At the moment, however, I couldn’t figure out how to help her and I wondered if my efforts were helping her or causing a bigger problem as I had nightlights in every bathroom and was considering motion detection lights because I was growing tired of having to accompany her everywhere. It was then that I decided to reach out for help and I was referred to the CAMAT Child Adolescent Mood Anxiety Treatment Program at The University of Miami. The program is a clinical research program dedicated to developing and testing state-of-the-art psychotherapy approaches for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents.It was a unique program in that the parents and children were participating simultaneously in different Zoom sessions. This was great and gave ample opportunities to discuss different approaches to many issues while the kids were doing their own activities. After several weeks of attending on Zoom, they were able to craft THE PERFECT solution to my daughter’s fears. This was of course on trial and error, but just like her momma, a good laugh can cure anything. To rid her of her nightmares, all we had to do was to create a new memory to replace the scary one. Could it really be that easy? I was doubtful but willing to give anything a try so I pulled out the colored pencils and glitter glue in an effort to transform her nightmare into a comedy.&nbsp;Initially, she didn’t want to even look at this picture on the computer screen but before you know it we started conceptualizing what we would do to the dinosaur and laughter started rolling in. She gave him a rainbow cape with glittery gold legs and I had given him a cutie mark on his butt with curly orange hair.&nbsp;It’s remarkable to think how quickly we were able to diffuse the situation given the right guidance. Honestly, I would have never thought of that solution and while it seems like a small accomplishment, that activity solved an issue that had only been getting worse over the course of 6 months.&nbsp;I’ve come to realize that while we may try to approach issues with the same techniques that have been passed down to us, perhaps it's not only more effective but even better to admit that we still have so much to learn and to accept help.&nbsp;Side note: the key to coming out of a traumatic experience on the positive side is to rewrite the narrative into a positive one. I just love that this one turned out to be comical too!

Conquering The Narrows with the Power of Belief

Know the number, not the story

Repetition Compulsion

Processing Traumas

Child Adolescent Mood Anxiety Treatment

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