Keilani Astra @keilani_astra

It’s tough to say where your life would be if it wasn’t as it was, but I believe many of us, as students of Liana Shanti, can confidently say it would be dark.

I likely would have continued to believe that my body was how I earned love and acceptance. I wouldn’t have known that I don’t have to earn love, or that the pattern of using my body to feel loved was because of sexual abuse by many men from the age of 18 months on, and I definitely wouldn’t have understood why I felt so alone and rejected when I was single. It had been the only way I’d been shown attention until I wasn’t, and that pain of rejection would have continued to poison me. I definitely would have never questioned why I drank so much weekly or smoked so much weed.

Or why I took over the counter medications daily. Or why I continually faked orgasms because I would never have understood the deep dissociation I went through as a young child, to the point where I’m still working to retune my relationship with my body entirely.

I probably would have always believed that 20 years of anxiety was from that time I pooped my pants in grade 7, and never made the connection to years of sexual abuse by a father, grandfather, uncle, babysitter, school teacher, etc that were shoved down and repressed, being the true root of panic attacks.

The debilitating fear of it ‘happening again’ was never about that 7th grade experience. It was about a little girl who had no protection, no way out, no control, NO voice. I would have continued to believe the story that I just had a ‘bad gag reflex’ as a child, not a PTSD symptom from sexual abuse. And a big one? I may never have come to know my narcissistic ways and continued to hurt people in my life by projecting the lack of worth and value onto everyone around me. I could have lived an ego centered life that caused pain for others as a way of masking my own and hiding behind a fake façade of fashion, lashes and sexuality.

Maybe I wouldn’t have understood that the internal attacks on my body were actually toxic energy stores from painful experiences that destroyed my gallbladder (to the point of removal), and created auto immune diseases, years of painful periods, womb aches, and other digestive issues.

Regardless of those maybe’s, I am here. Healing. Feeling. Purging. I am here protecting myself. I am here nurturing that little girl within me to repair the severed connection with her worth and value. I am HERE and I have a voice. And a purpose.

I will no longer keep the secrets of my abusers. It is not mine to carry.

How does one go from suffocating anxiety to freedom? How does one heal years of suffering and pain, and find joy, abundance, worth and purpose? How does one begin to find courage and strength to say no more, and choose their soul?