The Healing Place Podcast: Jaz Ampaw-Farr – Everyday Hero

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I am your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry, Spotify, or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com/podcasts/. You can also watch our insightful interview on YouTube.

What an absolute joy it was to chat “across the pond” with the beautiful, hilarious, and inspirational Jaz Ampaw-Farr. From her TEDx talk to her international motivational presentations, she is empowering others along their healing journeys. Thank you, Jaz for helping leave this world a better place – from your Tampax donation in the school bathroom to your work in prisons to your ability to make us laugh – your enthusiasm is contagious.

I encourage you to grab your tissues and watch her 11 minute TEDx talk. I promise it will be worth it!

Bio:

“It would be easy to say, you’ve never met anyone like Jaz before. Her passion for the potential we can uncover in ourselves when we are just 2% braver and her insight into how to remove the barriers that hinder connection between us and those we seek to influence make Jaz one of those people you will never forget.

Jaz’s story is one of growing up in the midst of most appalling abuse, poverty and hardship during which she encountered five adults (and, importantly, one pimp) whose belief in her literally saved her life. She shares her fantastic journey of how saying yes first allowed her to progress from council estate and foster care to advising international governments on education policy.

There are many messages leaders take away from listening to Jaz deliver keynotes across the UK, in the US (where she’s being called ‘The British Oprah’!) and elsewhere. Clearly, the impact that we have to connect and transform lives comes through loud and clear but there is more to it than just that.

Jaz also embodies the idea of bravery and the willingness to be defined by what you’ve tried even if you fail, rather than by what you could have done. Both her (very) brief stint on TV’s The
Apprentice, more substantial skills as a presenter on BBC’s Hard Spell Abbey and her career as a stand up comedian are good examples of this. And she shows that a human being can be
subject to the worst depravities of her fellow humans and not only survive, but thrive – and do so without anger or bitterness.

It is true, we are more than our stories, and Jaz shares strategies and insights in her work with humour, energy, honesty and an unswerving optimism in people and in authentic connection in
particular. Full of practical advice, for leaders from all industries, including the corporate, health and education sectors, her message is neatly summed up in her own words to those five teachers from her past and the title of her best selling book – Because Of You – This Is Me.”

Find out more about Jaz’s inspirational work at https://jazampawfarr.com/

Her book is currently available for pre-order in the U.K. on Amazon and will be released May 31, 2019.

Peace to you all!
Teri

Hope for Healing Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/9813e51db66b/hope-for-healing-newsletter-december-2018

Book Launch Team: https://www.facebook.com/groups/unicornshadows/

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Mary Giuliani

Mary Giuliani

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I’m your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com.  You can also view our interview on YouTube!

I was excited to have Mary Giuliani join me for an inspirational conversation.

For the past 25 years, Master Life Coach, Transformational Talk Show Host, Speaker, and Singer & Songwriter, Mary Giuliani has dedicated her personal and professional life to inspiring and empowering her audience to listen to their hearts and be true to themselves so they can create lives they truly love.

Mary, like many people, had a difficult childhood due to being raised in a dysfunctional family that was fueled alcohol abuse, anger and chronic tension between her parents. She coped by soothing herself with food. She went on to struggle with food, weight and hating her body for over 40 years reaching a top weight of 310lbs. Fortunately after many decades of personal growth, she finally discovered the root cause of her problem…childhood trauma. Due to her dedication to healing on a psychological, physical, brain and relational level, Mary has been able to maintain a 160lb weight loss for the past 16 years.

She now shares her healing and transformational journey through coaching women who have also had a difficult childhood and who are currently struggling with food, weight and body issues, that in order to heal, they must address the root cause that is driving their need to use food, childhood trauma.

Mary also shares her story of healing, recovery and transformation through her talk show, Mary Giuliani LIVE, through public speaking and through her original songs.

To work with Mary as a coach, book her as a speaker at your next event, watch her transformational talk show, or listen to her original songs visit her website: www.MaryGiuliani.net.

Peace to you all!

Teri

Hope for Healing Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/6d83db4cf426/hope-for-healing-newsletter-november-2018

Book Launch Team: https://www.facebook.com/groups/unicornshadows/

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Cortney Edmondson

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I’m your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com/podcasts/
I thoroughly enjoyed this enlightening interview with Cortney Edmondson – advocate, speaker, survivor, activist. Please join us as we discuss Cortney’s healing journey from trauma to triumph, her mission to provide others with a space to share their stories, her speaking joys, and much more!
Cortney shared the following information (and totally made my day with the compliment!):
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share tonight.  You are an incredible host! Below are the links to my instagram profiles and my website.
 
Instagram: @cortney_edmondson    &    @embracing_ACEs

Please be sure to follow, visit, and reach out.

Peace to you all!
Teri

 

 

 

Adventures in Soul-Sharing

Hay House Writers’ Workshop collage

Adventures in Soul-Sharing

My little sister, Katie, and I hopped on a Frontier flight out of CVG, headed for Orlando, FL, on October 20, 2017. This was a big flippin’ deal for me! The girl with a thirty year history of severe panic attacks had decided her dreams were bigger than her fears . . . and the present-day pull on my soul was greater than the haunted whisperings of my past. I sent up a few prayers. Okay. I sent up a few hundred prayers, climbed on board (but, not before caressing the smooth white finish of the jet, peaking out from behind the end of the jet bridge, reminding it to “fly safely”) and strapped myself in, a rosary in one hand and my favorite green fluorite stone in the other.

My bag o’ coping tools!

The flight was smooth. I may have even taken a millisecond glance out the window, just for the sake of saying, “Yeah. I looked.” I lost myself in my Mindfulness coloring book, focusing on the strange joy which dances around my head as I watch the white of the page transition to neon and glitter shades as my gel pen scurries between the lines. Katie and I chatted about writing our books, wondering out loud what awaited us at the Hay House Writers’ Workshop, and celebrated the idea of experiencing our first-ever sister trip. Alone. No parents. No kids. No spouses. We were on an adventure together, reminiscent of those nights before Dad’s bedtime stories, spent pretending Katie’s waterbed, clad in its rainbow comforter, was a boat, lost and adrift on a vast blue ocean. We could see the island in the distance . . . a yellow throw rug in the shape of a hang-ten foot . . . too far to swim toward safely. Sharks were surrounding us. Yet the boat was sinking! We would dive from the bed, belly crawling our way through the shark-infested waters, yelling to each other, “Save the babies! Save the babies!” And one or the other would scoop up the Drowsy Doll, in her pink polka-dotted pajamas, blonde hair sticking straight up on end from too many years of being carried around by those locks. The other would grab the naked doll we had named Johnny, giving his belly a good squeeze so he would return a long squealing doll cry from that squeaky hole in his bottom. We always made it safely to shore, snuggled up and giggling on the foot rug, grateful for the momentary reprieve from our real-life traumas. Our grown-up adventure was bound to be the same.

Teri & Katie – ages 5 and 2

Katie & Teri – flight to Orlando

We worked our way through the maze of the Orlando airport, tired and ready to crash in our resort room, eventually chasing down the Super Shuttle, as it pulled out of the parking space on the transportation platform. Scurrying into the back seat, I buckled myself in, and contemplated throwing my travel blanket over my head. I-4 traffic, at rush hour, on a Friday night. Oh, boy. I do not drive on highways. Ever. Or bridges. I have issues even being a passenger on little highway jaunts. Reminding myself I was on a soul-adventure and my calling to share my “story of hope” far surpasses my over-ingrained phobias, I took a deep breath and prepared myself for departure.

“We must pick up one more passenger,” announced the driver, his accent thick.

Where is this person going to sit? On my lap? I pondered as I tried to scooch over closer to my sister.

As the woman climbed into the backseat, she joked about fondling me, in her attempts to find the seat belt latch positioned under my ass. I laughed along and helped her out by crawling on top of my sister. Cozy. This could either help my highway nerves tremendously or trigger some of my “feeling trapped” anxiety. So, I came up with the ultimate in solutions . . . I closed my eyes!

A voice from my left addressed me about ten minutes into our ride and asked, loud enough for all to hear, “Teri, why are your eyes closed?” Yep. My sister.

Have you NOT been paying attention for the last thirty years?

Deep breath in. “Because I have highway anxiety. Closing my eyes helps.”

Then the voice from my right chimed in, “Really? Do you mind my asking why you have highway anxiety?”

I’m an open book. So, I shared the quick version of my trauma history and resulting C-PTSD diagnosis: alcoholic parent, physical abuse in childhood, multiple molestations, date rape, bank robbery with a co-worker stabbed with a hunting knife, bank robbery with a co-worker shot and murdered. Just the highlights. My eyes sealed shut even tighter.

The voice from the right, even softer in tone than a few moments earlier, “I am a trauma therapist.”

My eyes shot open.

Are you fucking kidding me? Of all the people in the world to squish in next to me on a shuttle ride, through rush hour traffic on a crazy busy highway in a city far from home, she turns out to be a trauma therapist! You rock, God!

My eyes locked onto the gentle gaze of a beautiful soul. Our smiles exchanged in new-found friendship. Paulette, the trauma therapist from Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, began sharing calming strategies. “Move your right foot up, toes lifted, while keeping your left foot down. Now alternate. Back and forth. As if doing a dance. One, two, three. One, two, three.” My feet tapped to the soft lilt of her instructions. My mind focused on the waltz happening in this shuttle. Far from the traffic zooming by, I was caught up in learning a new coping skill.

Almost an hour later, we halted the conversation, as we pulled into the Omni Resort drive. Our chatting had not paused since the moment Paulette had reached out with a hand to hold in heavy I-4 traffic. I now had an armful of coping strategies to add to my already overflowing toolbox of learned skills. I guess it’s time for a bigger toolbox!

The adventure had only just begun . . .