I can’t tell you how many times clients have said to me, “This may be TMI [too much information], but…” and then they share something they feel is mortifying or shameful or just very intimate about their bodies. Almost none of the time is it TMI.

Quite often the details that clients are worried about discussing involve bodily functions. Please know there is no way to give me TMI about your body. To start with, I’ve shared my home with dogs. Any pet lover can regale you with gross stories of the things their pets have eaten, vomited, pooped or disemboweled. It just goes with the territory of loving pets. They are furry, cute, wonderful, and sometimes downright disgusting.

Furthermore, I am a mother. Many parents who have had young children can tell you of a point where they were discussing diaper contents with peers and wondering, “Really? This is what my life is now?” Being a parent has infinite rewards, but it can get pretty darn challenging some days, too. Asides from all the fun with my kids as they grew up, I’ve gone through genital surgeries with two male partners. I’ve had a fully functional female body all my life. You aren’t going to gross me out by discussing what your body has decided to do in a fit of creativity or dysfunction (depending on how you want to frame it). Our society may teach us that talking about our bodies is improper, but that’s not true when you’re working with me. We need to talk about what your body is doing so we can heal it!

Outside of the realm of the human body, I have clients who are anywhere and everywhere on the gender and sexual spectrums. I have clients who are polyamorous. I have clients who are very kinky. I have clients who are having extra-marital affairs. I have clients who use illicit drugs. I have clients who are trying to break addictions and others who have succeeded. All of these clients are special to me, and none of what they tell me about their identities or their life choices makes me think less of them.

Unfortunately, I also have clients who have suffered a great deal of trauma. At least 75% of my clients have been sexually abused at some point in their lives. Many have been physically and emotionally abused. Others also have experienced medical trauma. I definitely fall into all of those categories myself. While the victim feels a great deal shame around the abuse they endured, I don’t view my clients with pity or shame. I see them as humans who need to be accepted, heard, loved, and helped to heal. Whatever they need to share is part of the healing process, and it's not TMI.

I recently told a client at the end of a session, “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘vagina’ so much in one session.” It wasn’t a problem at all for me to be talking about her vagina as we worked on healing the issues at hand. I just had said the word far more than I have before in such short a period of time. And that’s ok! Sometimes we just have to step back and laugh at the absurdity of things when we’re working on healing deep and painful issues.

​Know that it is really hard to present me with TMI, and no matter what you share with me, I won’t judge you for it. Instead, I’ll help you come to terms with that “TMI” and heal it as best I can.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Almost all of us will label 2020 as a year that really sucked when we look back at our lives. COVID-19 made a real mess of things. On top of that, there were economic and political issues that greatly impacted many. On a personal level, quite a few of us faced deep challenges we hadn’t expected to face last year.
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In one of my personal challenges, I briefly encountered a man who did something to me that can be considered a felony depending on the state one lives in. Fortunately for me, the situation was a best-case scenario of the possible horrible outcomes that could have resulted. Given the other traumas I have faced, this one was a small one. However, it still had an impact on me that caused a wound which I had to work on healing. 

​​Many months after this man traumatized me and with no further contact between us, he had the unabashed gall to send me a Christmas card which arrived on January 2, 2021 thanks to the post office delays over the holiday season. I was speechless when I opened it. It was a pretty card, and the message he wrote inside was generic but genuine. Still, him sending me a card was totally inappropriate given what had occurred. When I later shared the arrival of the Christmas card with others who knew the whole story, their universal response was, “He sent you what?!?”

I brought the card in and threw it on my family room coffee table next to the couch where I often sit. After a few hours, I had to throw the card on the back porch. The negative energy coming off of it was awful, and I couldn’t stand to be around it. When I told my mentor and my rolfer this, both of them said what I already knew and had done: “Burn it!”
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Someone on my Buy Nothing list had offered up some coffee cans which I claimed with the intent of burning the card. After photographing the card for this post, I tore it into pieces, said a prayer that its symbolic destruction would represent the departure of all the “bad” things that had happened in 2020 and would usher in a purified new year of 2021. And then I lit it on fire. (Please note the garden hose was immediately adjacent to the coffee can and I was burning it on a concrete patio many feet away from anything flammable.) As I watched it burn, I shifted my position with the wind to stay upwind of the smoke, continuing to pray for the healing of the damage that man caused me. A great deal of peace came over me during this ritual as I let go of some of the pain and moved toward the future.

After the fire burned itself out, I wet down the ashes and then threw the remainder in the trash which is what felt appropriate in this situation; sometimes scattering or burying the ashes in the better resolution. With the departure of those ashes, I said goodbye to 2020 with the hopes that 2021 will bring abundant blessings not just for me and my family, but for all.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

video of the card on fire in the coffee can