These are words that I’ve heard more times than I can count.  I feel ravished as I witness the transformation that takes place inside a persons soul–birthing a new reality… a new way of being with themselves… a new way of engaging life after completing the Spiritual Divorce ™ process.

Unconditional Love

It is great to be loved by someone, but it’s imperative to love yourself–unconditionally.  Use your life’s experiences to embody your greatness.  Open the door to your own heart and love yourself into unlimited possibilities.  Release shame and guilt and embrace the sacredness of your entire being…

Healing is an inside job and will only happen when you’re willing to do the heart work it takes to transform your life.  It’s hard work.  It’s emotional work.  It takes commitment and a willingness to let go of story and to step into a new reality.

Terri Marro has freed herself from a cocoon that limited her expression in the world.  After completing the Spiritual Divorce ™ process, she soars free from the guilt and shame that bound her and consistently steps into her greatness.  Terri did the work, and learned to love herself through it… as a partner in her healing process, I held the space for her transformation…   I listened deeply to what was being said… and I helped her see her story in a new way… one that bore beautiful gifts.  Gifts of love and compassion and empowerment.  And Terri stepped into a beautiful and ever-expanding version of herself.

Here’s Terri’s experience of the coaching process:

Leila has demystified and unraveled my life story.  I don’t know what happens when we have a session, but she validates what I feel and believe happened in my life as my truth, and then helps me see those areas I thought I was dumb or lacking of integrity, or evil, or whatever it seemed to be that made me this horrible human being bereft of any qualities belonging to a “good” human being.

My story has many facets to it and is woven into a tapestry of light and dark,  good and evil,  joy and sorrow, and great depression.  When we completed our first coaching session I began to see my life as a rich full expression of who I was based upon the people in my life and decisions I had made according to emotions I felt as a child or teenager, of a mother or  daughter, or of a wife or friend.

I based my life story on the reactions that others had to the decisions I made at various times in my life.  I did not realize that in order to make sound decisions I needed a mentor; a guide or a parent to show me and to teach me along the way.  I was expected to know what to do in all situations without any education in life.  I knew there was something terribly wrong with me; I was flawed in some way because I did not know how to do things I should have known how to do.   Leila took those areas of my life that were void of information and understanding and helped me fill them with compassion and self love.  We took those ares of my life that were full of fear and shame and unraveled those parts of my life until I could see that the emotional charge was of my own making.

Within our life coaching sessions we took my life story, which not only lived inside of me, but also had pieces of me scattered all over the place.  Part of me still lived in shame with my grandmother who has since passed; part of me lived with my ex husband who I had been divorced from for 20 years,  and part of me lived with  lovers and experiences  that caused great pain and shame.  In essence I was not a whole person but a  shattered Soul disassociated from the reality of my life.  I used to wonder what soul retrieval looked like.  I now know.

These sessions with Leila were more than what I would have imagined just bringing that part of me back; we brought back the story as well and incorporated what that story represented to my complete life.  With Lelia’s help we took those stories and placed them within my heart encased in something that represented the love and respect deserving of a loving friend.  Now they reside in peace and compassion.

I most appreciated that as we explored my story, and with the validation of my own feelings of truth, there emerged a different story.  This story had a much bigger truth.  It was one with unlimited possibilities within the realms of my own consciousness of human evolution.  This came about through total surrender to a higher truth.  All of my stories carried their own truth which included parts of myself that I now understand as my shadow selves; the parts of myself that I disowned and projected onto others.

Fear does not describe what I felt when we began this work.  Lelia listened to my stories and showed me my divine self in each one.  Things that held an emotional charge of shame and self contempt became a container for love and compassion; not only for me but for all the people in my life.  I am becoming aware of how limited my life was in so many aspects.

I love working with Lelia; she has helped me bring so much compassion into my world and quite honestly I believe she is an answer to a prayer.  I now understand the saying, “When the student is ready the teacher appears.” –Terri Marro

A Sweet Honoring….

Terri honors me so beautifully, but in reality it is Terri that is honored here.  Thank you Terri, for leaping!  Thank you being vulnerable enough to reinterpret your story.  Thank you for trusting me with your heart and allowing me to partner with you on your journey to wholeness!  Thank you for giving yourself the gift of ruthlessly compassionate support through our coaching relationship!  And most of all… thank you for letting me love you so deeply in our time together.  Namaste’ beautiful soul!

Spiritual Divorce; A Proven Process!

Spiritual Divorce is a proven process developed by New York Times best selling author, facilitator, and seminar leader Debbie Ford.  My ability to listen deeply and say aloud what wants to be said is a beautiful combination and necessary component to facilitating this coaching model.  I invite you to use me as your tool for transformation.  Call today to schedule your introductory coaching session.

November 3, 2009 Wendy Montanez

September 13, 2008 On Life Purpose Workshop

Jacob Kelley 2007 and 2009

Janet and Jeff Warren 2008 and 2009

Sigolene McCarthy

November 3, 2009 Terri Marro

Amy Symons

Natalie–Owner of Black Cat Book Store

Leila, I just want to thank you for the incredible support you have offered me.  I can’t imagine where I’d be without going through this process.  You have been awesome:  ruthlessly compassionate, present, an ass kicker, trusting and all done with love.  What a blessing you are!

]]> http://myheartheals.com/deb-leoni-testimonial/feed 1 http://myheartheals.com/how-to-heal-your-broken-heart http://myheartheals.com/how-to-heal-your-broken-heart#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:00:21 +0000 Leila http://myheartheals.com/?p=362 If you could have healed your heart by now, you would have.  Right?

Maybe you’ve tried to heal your heart, but you just don’t know how to move on from the pain.  The pain could actually be a protective mechanism that you think will keep you safe.  It won’t!  It only perpetuates your suffering.

In order to heal your broken heart, use the pain from your grief, and move powerfully into a bright future, you must be willing to let go of your story and the pain it’s caused you.  I can expertly help you with that!

Willingness is your ticket to freedom!

If you can say, “Yes, I am willing to heal my heart,” then you have taken the first step toward your liberation from the pain that’s kept you small and in a limited existence.  My client, Wendy is an incredible example of willingness.  She showed up willing to heal, willing to trust, willing to surrender, willing to not know, and willing to be wrong about everything she knew about her story.  She came out the other side as a powerful survivor of a tragic loss that took her husband long before one would ever expect.  Here’s her story:

After the tragic loss of my soul mate, the pain and guilt was too much to bear.  I woke up and performed my life’s tasks, but I disengaged from life; vowing to never allow life to hurt me that way again.  I was incapable of making the simplest of relationships work much less the difficult ones like three growing boys struggling to understand why their dad had been taken.

My mom, “an out of the box thinker,” suggested I talk to Leila (CK) and possibly consider doing some work with her.  Mom has made numerous “suggestions” in my forty years of life, but for reasons known clearly to me now, but not then… I called.

I truly believe God knew I had hit rock bottom and I was waking a dangerous line to a place that would only lead my family to further heartache.  Through the four months I have worked with Leila my life has completely shifted.  Where there once was pain, frustration, loneliness, and guilt, there now is peace, love, acceptance, and shear joy.

Through our work, as difficult and exhausting as it was at times, Leila has helped me to heal wounds I truly thought would eventually consume me.

I’ve begun to re-engage back into my life.  For the first time in four years my children and I are laughing again.  My relationships with my mom, sisters, friends, and co-workers have taken on a new deeper, richer meaning.

Things happen in all of our lives, but when we learn that we have choices we can choose to not be the victim anymore.  We can choose how we view the world and those in it.  It opens a door to a part of ourselves and others that is truly amazing and magnificent.

Thank you Leila for not giving my life back, but helping me to create a better one.  Words cannot express how grateful and blessed I feel that you were placed in my path.  I find joy everyday because you have helped me to clear out the pain.  There’s room to be happy now.  I’m not surviving anymore–I’m living, and when the hurts come I’ll be stronger and greater for them.

My life now has a meaningful purpose!

–Wendy Montanez

Healing your heart is sacred work!

It’s interesting to me that the word sacred has the same letters in the word scared. Fear often stands between us and our willingness to do this sacred healing.  We are fearful of being hurt again or of losing again.  We are fearful of what hard work it will take (that’s true–spiritual work is hard work), and we are fearful of letting go of everything we’ve told ourselves that holds the pain in place.

I consider my role in healing your heart to be a sacred trust.  I consider myself a guide and facilitator and honor the fact that you are the one doing the work and making the changes and healing your heart.  I’m simply a tool that you can use to facilitate the healing of your heart and the creation of a life you love, and I’m a damn good one!

I was just rereading my blogs to remember where I have been and realized I fell like I need to pull the plug and let my energy and creativity flow.  Interesting, it feels like I am wanting to habitually go back into my old space, but it does not exist anymore.  It’s nothing bad or evil, just a sense of wanting to react to life like I use to, but the old pattern and programing is no longer there.

Well, thank God!

There is so much going on that sometimes I don’t even realize it, but when I do–there it is.  The difference now is that I have the opportunity to question thoughts, motives, and self criticisms with out fear.  WITHOUT FEAR! Do you have any idea how big that is?

I think back to where I have been, complete insanity (and I do not say that disrespectfully), and where I am now, a life that has a foundation of God’s love and joy (and I do say that respectfully).

I have lived most of my life based on the feeling of self loathing, fear, anger, and hatred.

My life had hard edges and judgments and isolation.  It was filled with distrust with a little paranoia thrown in.  Still, somewhere I knew there was something better; something more loving.  This sounds harsh, but the reality of it is that it was a world of choices based on misinformation and pain, denial and love.

My existence was true insanity.

Without realizing the harm I was doing I made choices for my life based on my own anger and hatred of my grandmother.  The pain of this relationship was so intense I used whatever method I could find to act out these feelings and unfortunately I turned them inward and it became a life of self destruction working around what ever morality I had salvaged from my much buried love of God.  There were some good things like my daughter, who I loved very much, and some good friends and my love for the earth.

Twenty some years ago…

I found Al Anon and it truly saved my life and I worked that program the best I could.  However, I was never really ready to let go the fear and totally surrender.  There was always an element of distrust for me that I could never really break through.

Through a series of synchronicity I met a life coach.

Our introduction was at an Artist Way group and after about the first month I knew in my heart this was someone I could trust with my pain.  She showed me what it meant to be truly authentic and how it was to take responsibility for my life through compassion and an open heart.  I was finally willing to surrender my interpretation of my life story and allow my coach to lead me through.

I chose to address and work through my relationship with my grandmother.

When I was small she was the love of my life and I adored her.  Actually, she was everything to me, but when I grew older life happened and I hated her with all my heart and soul.

In some ways having a life coach and working through this relationship has allowed me to recreate my relationship with my grandmother allowing for us both to be human and for me to have a greater understanding of what it meant to be a teenager and for what it meant for grandmother to be a woman who lost a twenty-four-year-old son (my father) and a husband of many decades who died of cancer.

After all was said and done I developed and relationship with myself that is now full of compassion.

Every week, Leila (CK Reyes) and I dove deeper into where that pain and misunderstanding resided and with the most delicate of reflections, Leila being my mirror.  I began to see the pain as part of my choices and that without guidance and understanding of the human spirit my life had become a series of bad choices and events that built upon each other.

Today my life is changing every moment and has reached a momentum that is exceeding my every expectation.  I am becoming very aware of the planet and feeling the changes that are going on.  The need for a life that will fill me up has overridden the old feeling of needing work only to help me survive and and a measure how much money can I make.  I see my selfishness now and observe what it feels like and how it affects those around me without wanting to run and hide from my own behavior.

Last night I was having a conversation with my daughter about money and work and I was recalling a time when my husband was having an affair and I had decided to find a job.  He was home and I had found a job with the County Clerk and Recorder so I was telling him about the position and he looked and me and said “You, who would hire you?”

Telling this story this time there was no anger, but there was a deep sadness and compassion for myself that somehow I had lost my faith in God.  Through this whole process of coaching I came to know in my heart that I am a child of God and how much joy that gives me. 

The true joy of this process is I have changed at the core level.

Today the insights and ‘Aha’s’ are so frequent that there is really no time to process them as they come.  Integration is instant as more information keeps coming.  My gratitude for my own life is sometimes so overwhelming that I just sit and cry.

Thank you, Leila for showing me that I have everything I need already inside of me and for helping me to heal my broken heart.