For 50 years his body and soul harbored the trauma of seeing his parents’ heads battered & bloody and his brother’s knees crushed into the dashboard – he had tried therapy, meditation, & prayer – nothing helped for long.

Why was this so deeply ingrained?

His memory was accompanied by excruciating pain from his own severely mangled leg. A double whammy.

Ray was 10 years old when the accident happened. Now he is 60.

For 50 years he has been held hostage by the randomness of Post-Traumatic Stress

Yesterday, it hit him again and he grabbed the porch post. Trying to hold onto something solid while the wave of emotion and pain ripped him from the present and forced him to relive the confusion & pain of those moments. Moments that stretched into an ambulance ride from hell, as no air cast could support his leg over the bumps in the road. An Ambulance driver in tears, apologizing for the need to drive faster if they were to have a chance of arriving in time to save his life and his father’s.

Yesterday, he was defenseless against the attack from his own mind.

Today, he is free.

The mental & emotional “trash” left from those events has been taken out, once and for all.

Watching him walk out of the training room, I felt a wave of gratitude and renewed determination. I will continue to conquer my own fear of being seen on a stage if it means that I will have a chance to help one more person free themselves from the invisible jail of the post-traumatic mind.

What's holding you back? What "jail" has been created in your mind? We all have them. Is yours simple, like my fear of stage speaking – needing only a powerful why to move you forward, or is yours more like Ray's – lurking in the background, ready to suck the joy out of your day?

Don't let an invisible jail of mental & emotional blocks hold you hostage any longer. Reach out, there are people waiting to help you.