“I finally feel alive again.”
That may seem like a benign statement.
But when I hear it from my clients …
I know what’s happening.
It’s the opening statement of a life transformed.
Getting ready to emerge.
Under the spotlight and inertia of their calling and destiny.
They aren’t just calmer.
Or just more stable.
Or just “coping better.”
They’re coming fully alive.
Maybe for the first time.
They’ve stepped beyond surviving and into thriving. Beyond the endless loop of trying to heal. And into something many people never discover.
What is that?
The wonder of giving their healing away.
Sharing truths that change us, as they change others.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve written about the 6 steps of trauma healing … and then the 7th step that so many people miss.
The step that exits us from what I often call the endless healing loop.
Because …
healing programs,
workshops,
therapy,
and coaching usually focus on one thing:
Healing.
And healing matters deeply.
We all need it after trauma. And though many arrive in the healing procress not believing so … you/me/we “deserve” that healing.
But healing was never meant to become our permanent destination. It was meant to take us somewhere.
Toward true freedom.
Toward our purpose.
Toward great fulfillment.
Toward meaningful contribution.
To equip us to give life a new version for our every attempt, at whatever we reach for or do.
Toward a life where what happened to us no longer owns us …
but instead becomes something that gives life,
not only to us … but to others.
(From my AA friend. “Recovery [for me] is just another word for healing. No one ever recovers or heals just by getting sober or just by hearing truths and agreeing with them. Or by letting them play in their heads. Healing truths must be lived, expressed, shared to become more than something looping inside. Something that yes, you acknowledge. But never take the chance to let them change you. Why? You settle for the internal looping of truths instead of becoming and being them.”)
That’s where healing becomes breathtaking.
When it stops being only about recovering your life …
and starts becoming about giving life.
That’s the wonder of the 7th step.
And honestly?
It still amazes me. It moves me deeply.
That’s why I call it grace. Amazing grace.
I’ve watched people who were trapped for years in fear, shame, addiction, self-hatred, and emotional chaos … suddenly begin to come alive when they started helping someone else heal.
Not because they became perfect.
But because healing finally started flowing outward instead of only inward.
When that shift occurs, something quite powerful begins to happen.
Psychological research consistently shows that people who engage in meaningful contribution experience greater life satisfaction, emotional resilience, and lasting well-being than those whose lives remain primarily self-focused.
Why is that?
Because contribution changes us.
It gives us an internal sense of accountability to not let ourselves down.
It fulfills something deep within us that survival alone could never give us.
We were created for more than surviving.
We were created to thrive.
To matter.
To love.
To build.
To restore.
To leave fingerprints of healing on the lives of others.
I’m writing this for you who care and are called.
When we begin giving our life away … our healing multiplies.
In ways we never dreamed could happen.
“More than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes or wildest dreams.”
1. Healing multiplies when it begins to flow.
One of the greatest fears people have about leaving the healing loop is this: “If I stop focusing on my healing … will I lose it?”
I understand that fear deeply. People have often fought so hard for every inch of healing ground, they’ve gained.
The idea of turning outward can feel risky. Or even foolish.
But here’s the miracle:
Healing that’s shared doesn’t diminish.
It multiplies.
It’s just like planting a seed. You don’t bury one seed in the ground and only get one seed back. You get an increase. A true bountiful harvest.
Not just a little, but it comes back in overflow mode.
The same principle applies to healing. When you encourage someone else,
listen compassionately, share your story honestly, or help someone else find freedom … something strengthens inside of you too.
And may I say … there’s nothing else quite like it. Something that’s hard to explain in words. It creates a unique gratitude, wonder, and awe about life that most people cannot fathom.
But I’m not speaking solely from my personal experience.
Research from institutions like the Cleveland Clinic has shown that acts of generosity and helping others … does something very neurochemically based.
It activates the brain’s reward circuitry, releasing dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.
We know these chemicals as the “feel good hormones.” But they’re more than “feel good.”
They do things in us and for us:
- Regulate and calm our emotions
- Create deeper connection
- Significantly increase our peace of mind
- Promote trust building
- Inspire joy within that overflows
In other words … your brain responds literally by demonstrating multiplication when you give healing away.
It’s organically automatic.
There’s a freedom waiting after we learn and prepare. When we become ready to face the fear of losing what we need to be giving away (our healing).
And when we do, what we desire anchors our heart’s default mode to hope, resolve, and growth by us simply saying, doing, and being.
I never tire of watching a soul catch fire in someone’s eyes.
That’s forever extraordinary to me.
Such a divinely beautiful thing.
To me (daily) it’s a sacred experience.
2. Giving our healing away fulfills us.
I believe many people stay exhausted in the healing loop because they’re unknowingly trying to meet thriving needs through survival-focused living.
Pause a moment and think about that.
The needs that cause us to thrive are:
personal growth,
contribution,
making a difference.
Yet we are on the hamster wheel of trying to feel
safe enough,
important enough,
adventurous enough,
and loved enough.
Those are survival needs.
Healing helps stabilize us. And feel like some of our survival needs are finally being met. But we’re still on the wheel, running for dear life.
Surety of mind and heart, begins when we practice what we’ve discovered we needed. We needed it to change us into who were meant to be, and sharing what we were meant to express.
But as counterintuitive as it seems, in the midst of it, contribution is the only thing that can make us come alive.
There’s a profound difference between:
“I’m finally safe”
and
“My life matters.”
That second experience changes everything.
I’ve watched people who were emotionally drowning suddenly begin to radiate with unmistakable joy once they started helping others.
Not that fake happiness.
Not spiritual bypassing.
But sincere fulfillment.
Why?
Because contribution, answers something deep within our human soul.
Research in meaning-centered psychology shows that purpose and contribution are among the strongest predictors of long-term emotional well-being.
We might expect those predictors to be things like …
comfort,
success,
achievement.
But not so.
When we know our pain wasn’t wasted … that means something!
And when life has meaning … we change!
That’s why the 7th step feels so different.
Healing no longer feels like maintenance.
It begins feeling like purpose.
And purpose breathes life into us in ways survival could never even begin to give us.
3. Giving healing away becomes legacy.
At some point in life, most people begin asking themselves deeper questions.
Questions like:
· Did my life matter?
· Did my pain have meaning?
· Did anything beautiful come from what I survived?
· Am I leaving anything behind that might benefit others positively?
The 7th step answers those questions powerfully.
Because when you experience your healing bringing life to others…
your story no longer ends with trauma. It continues forward powerfully through impact.
Sometimes that impact happens quietly in a conversation, when you mentor someone, when you show up differently to love people in your family, when you become an emotionally safe place for people to turn to.
And for some of us, it becomes a calling.
I have seen people take their deepest wounds and transform them into extraordinary lives of service.
Some use it in ministry.
Some in volunteer work.
Some in leadership.
Many step into becoming certified trauma coaches.
But not because they want a title.
But … totally because they deeply desire
their suffering to become
someone else’s life raft and survival guide.
That’s legacy.
And honestly?
I can’t think of many things more beautiful than that.
Do the words: “Trauma Coaching” tug at you deep inside?
Read more: https://bit.ly/CoachTrainingCertificationInfo
*****
This 7th step is the bridge builder between yourself and your heart.
It’s how we finding a new belief system of hope and expression.
It’s where our therapy efforts find the difference they’re making in us.
Trauma healing does not really have a final destination. But it absolutely has a place where it multiplies. Where it overflows.
Where it begins to anchor what we long for. From that place, it becomes abundance instead of mere survival.
That only happens when healing begins
to move through us instead of ONLY … TO us.
When we give.
When we share.
When we contribute.
When we become part of someone else’s healing story.
The best way for our healing to happen, is to give away what our healing journey has uncovered within us, that’s true about us.
That’s where fulfillment begins.
That’s where purpose awakens.
That’s where healing becomes breathtaking.
Every day, it takes my breath away!