How To Choose Freedom and Joy After Trauma | Mary Firestone

Thanks for tuning in to the Boundless Authenticity Podcast, my guest today is Mary Firestone. Mary is the author of Trusting The Dawn and she has undertaken a brave mission of letting others know there is a light on the other side of the darkness of PTSD.

In 2017, Mary and her family were just getting settled into a new home in Montecito when the Thomas Fire erupted at the end of that year. Mary, who was four months pregnant at the time, and her family evacuated for a month and returned to their home in January 2018 when the area was deemed safe. They were not under mandatory evacuation orders on the night of January 9 of that year when massive amounts of heavy rain caused a debris flow that would claim the lives of 23 people (many of them her immediate neighbors) and over 450 structures. Their new home was in one of the two direct paths of the tsunami-like debris flow of mud, water, and boulders that tore down the mountain. Mary was separated from her son and husband and trapped alone for five hours on a sliver of her bathroom counter, wet and cold from winter rain and covered in toxic mud. For much of that time she thought her son and husband had not survived as she watched the two story part of her home that contained her son’s bedroom get washed away in a river of mud. While trapped, she experienced a connection to a powerful and calming force.

Trusting the Dawn is the story of her trauma and survival during the 2017 California wildfires and subsequent 2018 mudslide which took her brand new family home — and Mary’s transformation through healing. This book, which is currently #1 on Amazon’s New Release in Stress Management Self-Help, is an offering for survivors of all kinds of trauma. In Trusting the Dawn, Mary draws from both her own real-life experiences and her background in clinical psychology to offer a radical, integrative handbook for not only healing from trauma but awakening to even more joy and meaning because of your experiences. In the words of Dr. Joe Dispenza, “[Trusting the Dawn] is medicine for anyone who wants to free their mind, body, and soul from the past.”

In this episode Mary talks to us about:
Finding your way out of PTSD
Taking back your power after a traumatic experience
How to Heal Trauma with Mystical Therapies
How to turn trauma indicators into opportunities for growth

Tell us about your self and your story of transformation.

What is your definition of trauma?

What I have found over the past 9 years of working with people is that everyone believes that the thing that happened to them is the absolute worst thing - People tend to say stuff like "nobody has ever survived what I have been through" and its like well...that's not really true - but we won't heal by comparing one situation to another. Many people underestimate their true power. What are your thoughts on that?

"Emerging from our darkest moments into the light teaches us that now is the only guarantee. It motivates and empowers us to seize the moment and live and love like we mean it." Trusting The Dawn - How To Choose Freedom and Joy After Trauma

You can find Mary at https://www.maryfirestone.co or on Instagram @trustingthedawn2022 or @firestonesisters

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