Lessons from 10 Years of Healing
- Becca Briggs
- Apr 25
- 12 min read
I often get asked how I got into life coaching, NLP, human design, tarot, and all of the other modalities I use - especially as someone relatively younger. This is a fair question, and comes with both a short answer and a long answer.
The short answer is I got into it through coaching/healing myself over the last decade after a breakup, somewhat even before I knew that's what I was doing.
Cute, right? But I'm sure you're wondering what the REAL story is.
I realize I've not shared my true, deep, nitty gritty healing journey, so if you've ever been curious - here it is along with a few of the most notable lessons I've learned along the way.
Before I get into it, I should give some backstory.
After graduating high school, I reconnected with a childhood friend (more like enemy haha) whom I hadn't seen since middle school and we hit it off romantically. Just like every other young, heart-eyed, insecure girl who just wanted to be loved and didn't know any better, I assumed my life was now a perfectly written enemies-to-lovers story and dove headfirst into - what I would later realize was - a very toxic relationship.
When sharing my romantic history, I always tell people we were together for 6 years, as that's how long that entire chapter lasted. I'll be honest though, in reality this relationship's timeline was more like 2 years of me blindly chasing breadcrumbs and trying to be chosen by him while he dated around, then about 1 year of off-and-on long distance when I moved back to Iowa, followed by 3 years of us living together.
During this time frame, I had started some form of personal growth - mostly just in the form of therapy and antidepressants, which wasn't for me but that's a story for another day - but for the most part I was in a real dark place. We stayed together out of trauma and fear - neither one of us wanting to be left, but neither one of us respecting and loving each other the way we wanted or deserved. I called it "relationship chicken", as we spent pretty much the entire last year of the relationship waiting for the other one to call it quits, but not letting them when it came down to it.
By January 2015, we were seeing a couple's counselor, I was working, modeling, and going to school while he stayed home and played video games, we had mostly separate lives socially, and any time we spent together mostly involved watching tv, scrolling on social media, or complaining about something. We fought constantly, to the point where our neighbors were concerned. When I look back at that time, I mostly just remember how heavy and doomed everything felt, how everything was a dramatic conflict, and how crying myself to sleep every night was normal. When I look back at photos from that time, I see how much I tried to make myself seem like I had it all together, disguised behind all of the stylish clothing I'd splurged on to cope with the stress and a full face of makeup to hide the tears and eye bags, but in reality I was just an empty shell.
We had gotten into a massive fight on Christmas, complete with a very dramatic "breakup" that lasted a few hours. I remember when we made up that night, I told him that was my final straw. If things didn't improve, I was out. At that point it had felt like we tried literally everything to make it work to be in the pattern of 2-3 good months and back to the same old bullshit all over again. So when I told him this, inside I set a deadline - if things weren't different in 6 months, that would be when I would call it.
Now for the REAL beginning.
Fast forward to April 2015, I had started doing personal assistant work for my artist and model friend, Emily. The first week I was working with her, she recommended a psychic to me that she had recently seen and was raving out. Now, at this time in my life, I didn't believe in anything. I had cut all religious ties, but also thought anything spiritual was also a sham. But for some reason, at that moment, I thought, "Well shit, I have nothing else to lose. Might as well see what she's got to say" and scheduled the appointment.
I remember being SO nervous the day of. I got my favorite Starbucks drink, and sat outside in the grass for a while to calm my nerves beforehand because I felt so anxious not knowing what to expect, but for some reason also felt hopeful that I'd maybe hear something that would help me. I showed up to the appointment, and made sure not to give any information about myself other than my first name, ready for anything.
When I tell you that this encounter changed my entire life...
The moment the session started, she immediately said there was a dark cloud of energy around me with a ball and chain around my ankle, and that I had either just broken up with someone or was about to, which was good because that relationship was never supposed to happen - it was forced. She then said I was at a crossroads, and could choose whichever path I wanted, but that for my safety, health, and wellbeing I needed to choose myself. There was so much more that she said (I took 5 pages of notes), she covered everything from my childhood, family, career, love, health, life plan, etc. and just had so much wisdom. She said things that were spot on that no one would know unless they knew me - including that I'd never been truly happy in my life until that point even though it's what I deeply yearned for. At the end of the session she allowed me to ask any questions I wanted, and I asked her if I would ever be truly happy. Her response was, "Yes, you will be. But you have to choose you, step up and do the work, and stop being a child. Then you'll be happy."
I left the session being a true believer, and ended my relationship two days later.
Then the healing part began.
Okay, this is where all of the lessons come in. Because as scared as I was to end this relationship that I was convinced for so long was going to be my forever, I had no idea what was in store for me on the other side or how to find stability in the unknown. Which brings be to my first lesson:
✨Embrace the duality life and power of your choice.
When I made the decision to cut the relationship ties, I felt this huge wave of relief - even more so through the messiness of the weeks following my decision. Once I moved out and was completely on my own, all of a sudden I was questioning my choice, wondering if it was as bad as I thought, or if I was overreacting. I was also under the disillusion that once I made the change that everything would magically feel great, and very thrown off that this "better" decision came with its own challenges, pains, and discomforts. I'm sure you've experienced similar to this before, but after making big changes - like a pendulum - there can be a swing from one extreme to the other and back again. We can feel really high, then really low, about our choice, and it can be easy for the mind to get in the way and talk us back into our comfort zone - even though we aren't happy there.
With this situation, I had a few moments of doubt about my choice, and after a few months tried seeing if there was anything left in that relationship to find that I had no interest in going back to what once was. But I've found through the years that the best way to move through change is to accept the good and bad within it all instead of focusing on one side or the other. Yes, we had some good times, and yes, we had some bad times. Yes, it was hard to leave and figure things out on my own, and yes, it would've been hard if I had stayed. Both sides can coexist, and it's not about choosing a path and digging in, fighting, pushing, forcing to make it happen (that's how we stayed stuck in that relationship for so long), but about choosing a path, seeing all sides of its existence, and taking aligned actions to navigate the highs and lows that present themselves along the way until if/when you decide to choose another path.
You get to choose your hard, and you get to choose your path. But we so often ignore our power by feeding things that distract us, which brings me to my next lesson:
✨Replace distractions with realness.
The harder part for me when I stepped out on my own was not having any distractions from myself and my healing (like constant fights and another person's needs). It was very uncomfortable for a long time for me to feel okay to sit with myself, process the big feelings, and actually get to the point of loving my own company. When I moved out, I made a point not to get a tv for my apartment, because for so long the routine had been to come home and just watch tv together until going to sleep and I didn't want that again.
I ended up spending most of the next couple of years spending time with friends and going to concerts, which yes was so much fun and came with so many amazing experiences. And also when I look back at this time, I can see how I was still just trying to distract myself from facing my depth. It was easier to go party it up at a show, drink with friends, and stay out all of the time than to sit with my healing. Again, the duality exists within the choice, but had I known at the time that the fastest (and only) way out is through, I might have actually done the work sooner rather than waiting a couple of years to do so.
This was also a time where I had to learn how to find my inner authority again. From growing up with emotionally immature parents, to immediately entering an abusive relationship with a narcissist, I had learned that I was weak and incapable. So, after becoming completely sold on the spiritual realm after my psychic reading, I started leaning on psychics, tarot readers, and crystals to "tell me what to do", as yet another distraction. It wasn't until I truly did the inner work that I learned how to embrace these tools and modalities as a way to connect with myself and my truth deeper instead of simply using them as a way to get answers to the questions I was refusing to face internally and directly.
It all comes back to our truth. Which is something many of us are unaware of, as we're not often given the chance (let alone encouraged) to explore our truths, which brings me to my next lesson:
✨Figure out who you REALLY are what you TRULY want.
This is something I kind of started before taking the big leap, but took quite a while of learning and experimenting for me to completely understand. In my journey, this started as a friend and I getting real interested in Myers-Briggs and deep diving into learning and everything about it while sharing all about it with others. This morphed into also learning about the Enneagram and similarly deep diving into all aspects of it. Between these two tools, I gained a lot of self-awareness of how and why I do what I do. This is great, but also found myself again using it as a distraction to "understand" versus a tool to actually grow and heal. It took a couple of years, but I finally started learning how to detach from just the labels and stereotypes from these archetype systems, grow and heal in the areas blocking me, and actually communicate and take action towards what my needs, desires, and purpose. When I started changing this approach is the same time I discovered life coaching and human design, which was incredibly synchronous in my finding my own way.
When I look back at my healing journey, I can see all of the various changes and influences I went through while trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. In embracing the duality, this is definitely something that has been a strength and a pitfall for me. When I've changed to try to be who I thought others wanted or expected of me, trying to win their approval and acceptance, it's left me feeling empty and insecure. When I've changed to "test it out" and see if I want to take or leave certain aspects, it's left me feeling more curious and playful. Now, as I look at my current life, I can see different reminders of the various chapters of my life - through attributes, aesthetics, style, behaviors, stories, etc. - that I carry with me. I don't need to fit into a box to know who I am, I'm who I want to be, but knowing and being connected to myself allows me to make the most empowered and aligned decisions for myself, so I'm no longer living my life for others.
Taking my power back to be who I want to be and live how I want to live, because I want to has been incredibly affirming. Taking my power back from my past was more challenging, which brings me to my last lesson:
✨Forgiveness frees you from victimhood.
This has been one of the hardest lessons I've had to embrace to heal, and to be honest is one I've only finally accepted within the last year or so, and this is forgiveness for those who I've perceived as wronged me as well as myself.
I didn't realize until doing some deep healing around my relationship wounds the amount of pain and anger I still held towards this old relationship. I had spent years shrugging off my old, "awful, abusive, relationship with my narcissistic ex boyfriend" and sharing horror stories about how horrible our relationship was, but I never considered forgiving and releasing him and the relationship. No, this forgiveness isn't to excuse his actions - it was an unhealthy relationship with emotional, sexual, and physical abuse that occurred. That being said, knowing what I know now, I understand that the love we give and seek is all based on what we know from experience. We were in our younger 20's at the time, and without getting too much into it he grew up in a very unstable and abusive household. So not only was the only love he'd known and seen very unhealthy, but he had also not gone through any healing of this very intense trauma he was carrying with him. Because of this, I do feel compassionate and forgiving of the role he played in our relationship because I know it was never actually about me - this was all his pain, and I feel for him for how hard that must have been to endure and not know how to heal from. It also wasn't just his fault.
I also needed to learn how to forgive myself for our relationship. On the one hand, because I was not without fault. I've mentioned I was very insecure at the time, and I was also extremely codependent. I wanted someone to save me, and had intense expectations for him to do that for me. I also had a lot of deep trust issues, and would invade his privacy to see what he was saying or thinking because of my fears of him cheating, leaving, or rejecting me. I allowed my fears and pain to lead, because I thought that's what I deserved and at least a part of me wanted that chaotic, dramatic, intense relationship (based on my own childhood and experiences of what love was). On the other hand, it's because I was choosing to stay a victim - both in the relationship and after it. It felt safer putting the blame on him and why it was all his fault, but the real freedom and peace I'd been searching for came from the moment that I took ownership of my role and choices in that relationship, and forgave myself for them. I was not a victim, I made a choice to stay in that relationship to have needs met, until I decided I didn't want it anymore. I take ownership for the choices I made in the relationship (good and bad), and I choose not to be defined by them. I am not a victim to my past experiences, I have chosen to do the work to heal and grow, break the patterns, and experience life and relationships differently moving forward.
There's probably so many more lessons I could share, but those have been the main ones on this decade-long journey. It's still always mind-blowing to me to think that it all started with a random psychic reading. You never know when those moments will come that will change the trajectory of your life until they happen.
This is honestly one of the biggest inspirations for my 1:1 Retreat Day sessions, to offer an experience where you can be really seen and guided in a way that will completely transform your life. They're filled with so much love, support, healing, and insights that will help you see the bigger perspective so you can see the duality, claim back the power of your choice, lead with authenticity over distractions, reconnect with yourself and your truth, and embrace full acceptance so you can feel forgiven and free of your past.
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