The Healing Powers of Friendship, Gumption and "The Freedom To"

After more than a decade of debilitating chronic pain, I earned my freedom with the help of my best friend Jess.

Seventh grade was the most confusing and painful year of my life.

The events of that year twisted my psyche into a giant untieable knot, and my body soon reflected that reality. Thrust into a life of chronic physical pain by age 14, with soul wounds buried so deep they were untouchable, I became a shell of my naturally extroverted and adventurous child self.

Paradoxically, or perhaps because of some divine organizing intelligence behind all of life, that same year I met the person who would help me heal and find freedom almost twenty years later.

When I met Jess in 7th grade, I was the new girl.

Established social cliques did their best to test my mettle with mild forms of bullying. They didn’t really know what to do with me, though, because I didn’t react at all. Already emotionally shut down, by age 13 I appeared immune to pain. Inside I was full of tension, anxiety, and painful feelings that I constantly did my best to hide from the world.

Oblivious to the unspeakable family tragedy that was unfolding in Jess’s life, I was absorbed in a secret hell of my own.

Just before I started 7th grade I was targeted by our 30 year old male neighbor. When he moved into the house next door and saw me, he must have instantly sensed the truth: I was lonely, distrusted the adults in my life, and if he played his cards right, he could lure me into his violent and manipulative web without protest. After six months of grooming, he succeeded.

I don’t remember the first time I had sex, but I know it was with him. There’s a period of 2-3 months during the second half of 7th grade that I have no memories of. It’s the only time in my life that I dissociated (left my body) completely. When I came back into my body, I woke up in a nightmare with no idea how I got there or how to get out. He was an alcoholic and drug addict, and he found many ways to hurt me that would not be visible to my parents or peers.

Meanwhile, Jess had been catapulted into the national news spotlight. Her family had the attention of the president, and she was hanging out with celebrities; which made her kind of a big deal in our small town California school. Like me, her psyche was becoming confused and twisted by a warped social system that celebrates fame even when it costs someone everything they hold dear. Her story isn’t mine to tell, so I won’t say any more.

What matters is that when we met, Jess and I were both suspicious of false adoration; we were each enduring pain that no teenagers should ever have to endure; and neither of us wanted to talk about it.

I didn’t make her pain a big deal, and she didn’t ask me about mine. We got each other at a felt level.

Junior high turned into high school, and after two and a half years of being the object of his violence, I found the courage to end the neighbor’s hold over me.

Jess and I were in the same friend circle, but not best friends.

Rachelle and I found each other in 8th grade, and by 9th grade we were inseparable. Rachelle was the only reason I survived those years. In her presence I almost felt normal. We laughed, talked about boys, and made plans for college: she was going to Brown University, and I would go to RISD - an art school a few blocks away. Every time I was with her I nearly forgot that I had a secret life full of violence and pain and so much shame I thought I would explode sometimes.

Halfway through my 11th grade year, my family moved to Oregon. I begged my parents to let me stay behind and live with Rachelle while I finished high school. Naturally, they were empathetic - but opposed.

One month after moving to Oregon, I answered the phone and heard the voice of my friend Erin (from California) telling me that Rachelle had just died in a car accident. In an instant, my whole world collapsed.

Still emotionally frozen and immobilized by shock and loss, whatever life force I had kept intact through the horrors of the previous years drained out of me. Despondent in every way, I didn’t even cry at Rachelle’s funeral; which made me feel even more defective than I already did.

A month later I dropped out of high school.

I didn’t go to college.

I was lost.

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Swept towards an unknown distant shore by the currents of life, in 2008 I found myself sitting in the basement level classroom of my new massage school in South Carolina when our instructor asked if any of us wanted to try a method of fascial stretching that involved getting stepped on.

My hand shot in the air so fast I swear my body knew something that day that my mind is still catching up to all these years later.

Placing my calf on the chair he’d set up for me, I felt my body buzz with anticipation as he stepped onto the adjoining chair and sunk his weight into the soft flesh of my lower leg.

An exquisite feeling flooded my body, and 30 seconds later I knew I would be OK.

I knew I would heal.

I knew I would run and hike again.

I knew I would experience freedom.

And I knew that my potential for freedom was bound to this mysterious substance called fascia.

(I couldn’t have told you this back then, but the reason I knew I would be OK is because I had retreated so far inside my body for self protection that it literally took someone stepping on me with their full body weight to locate all the parts of my psyche I’d put there for safe keeping; I needed a force equivalent to the ones that put me in there to draw me back out. Getting stepped on can be really intense, and I relished the feeling; not everyone does).

When the above photo was taken, I had not been able to trail run for 6 years due to debilitating knee pain; I hadn’t been able to hike for 4 years, for the same reason. On top of that, I experienced daily gut pain, jaw pain and systemic tension.

Pain is bearable when we know why it’s happening and what we can do about it. This was not that, and if you’ve ever experienced chronic pain then you know what I’m talking about. This pain was persistent; mysterious; and totally resistant to every effort of mine to get rid of it; this kind of pain feels like torture.

Suddenly, with the weight of another body falling into mine, I felt the unbreakable pain barrier crack a hair’s width; and I could see the light of freedom shining brightly through that crack. Finally!

Only…none of my pain went away.

From 2008 to 2011, I immersed myself in this world of fascial stretching, attending about 20 weekend workshops in a two year period.

After asking a dozen instructors, practitioners and teachers to help me run and hike again (including the founder of the method), nothing had changed. While everyone was sincere in their efforts to help me, they tended to give up quickly.

I still couldn’t run without debilitating knee pain. I couldn’t hike mountains. My body persisted in giving me the same chronic pains as always. The only thing that had changed was me - at a soul and spiritual level.

I was no longer afraid of my pain; I knew that I would experience freedom; and I was still certain it would be fascia release that got me there.

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Not one to jump on trends early, I resisted signing up for Facebook until 2008.

How did this weird blue online universe know who my high school friends were?! That’s creepy.

Wait a minute…

There’s Jess!

Reunited by Facebook, we started DMing; which led to phone calls that sometimes lasted hours.

Jess was living in northern California, not far from where we met. Both of us were unhappy, unhealthy and longing for change; we found ourselves at a similar crossroads in life. After catching up, we started talking about the present and future…and what a fulfilling life might look like, for both of us.

In 2009 I spent a month in California to explore the possibility of moving back there, which cemented our growing friendship.

Then, one of my fascia stretching workshops took me to Colorado in August, 2010; and I fell in love. As soon as I arrived in Boulder I knew I would live there. With its sunflowers, deep blue skies, rocky mountains and abundant sunshine, this place felt like the forever home I’d been searching for my whole life. Living in South Carolina did not suit me at all.

In a moment of sheer joy and determination during my 3 days in Boulder, I called Jess and asked “Do you think you would ever move to Colorado?”

Laughing at the mere suggestion, Jess said “I will never live in Colorado.”

One thing you should know about me (if you haven’t figured it out yet): I’m incredibly persistent.

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By March, 2011, Jess had agreed to pack her car with whatever would fit inside and meet me in Arizona for a retreat; I would do the same, and after the retreat we would figure out where to live together.

After just one week in the desert while immersed in a new social atmosphere, Jess’s health improved dramatically; her soul and spirit soared, and by the time it was over she told me she’d follow me anywhere (true story).

Without missing a beat, I told her emphatically:

“We’re going to Colorado!”

Two weeks after arriving we signed a one year lease on a mountain home with the most perfect running and hiking trail right outside our door.

Before we’d even unpacked, I asked Jess “Would you learn to step on me, and help me run again?”

She replied, “Sure! That sounds fun.”

Mere weeks later, I was running and hiking again without any pain and feeling more freedom than I’d imagined was possible for me this lifetime.

Look at her 🥰

Without meaning to, this beautiful human being changed my life forever. She gave me the most precious gift any human being could give another, and everything I do to this day is my attempt to pay it forward.

Jess didn’t give me the ability to run again. She didn’t give me my freedom. She gave me something far more rare.

This woman showed up for me with a heart full of love and the gumption to jump into the unknown in order to help me.

She loved me in a way I believe we all long to be loved: she made my mission her mission, and put herself in service of my highest ideals.

That is the gift she gave me that I have been trying to pay forward ever since.

We pursued the freedom to trail run; and I got so much more.

You may or may not know this, but I never wanted a career helping people resolve pain. I knew I would be good at stepping on people, but it wasn’t a calling or dream. My own pain had sent me on a quest to understand the human body, and this thing called pain. I wanted to be a writer (things do tend to come full circle).

But then…Jess gave me the most beautiful gift anyone could.

After twenty years of wondering if I’d ever know a moment’s peace; if I’d ever feel loved; if I’d ever know what it’s like to live inside a body that doesn’t feel like a torture chamber…I would have settled for the ability to trail run and hike without knee pain.

I did not expect the level of healing and freedom I experienced that summer, and it changed me forever.

Finding myself suddenly living in a body that felt light, buoyant and effervescent, with a heart and soul that felt truly loved by another, I vowed to devote the rest of my life to helping as many people as possible experience these feelings.

Because of Jess, I learned the most important lessons of my career:

✦ Modalities don’t matter nearly as much as the person/people using them
✦ Who we partner with for healing matters, and determines the result
✦ Pursuing the absence of pain sends us in circles
✦ Pursuing freedom is the adventure of a lifetime
✦ Chronic pain that is rooted in social wounds that must be healed socially
✦ For those of us that have experienced physical violations, being stepped on feels a lot safer than table massages - and if someone does it with fearless love, we can heal those boundary ruptures where they occurred: in our body
✦ The body will regenerate rapidly when there are no nervous system patterns in the way
✦ Love, freely given, is the most healing force on planet Earth
✦ Attachment to outcomes is the primary impediment of outcomes
✦ Healthy fascia doesn’t hurt when compressed
✦ Pain and damage are not synonymous
✦ Genuine friendship is rare and precious
✦ The world could use more people like my friend Jess

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Meet Jess and join us for a special LIVE Zoom call tomorrow - Tuesday July 11th @ 11am Pacific.

CLICK HERE TO ATTEND.

(I’ll also send another email reminder with the Zoom link tomorrow).

For the first time ever, Jess is making an appearance in my online community and I am so very excited to introduce her to you - and you to her.

Ironically, Jess’s superpower of not making a big deal of my pain meant that she also didn’t make a big deal out of my freedom. She didn’t make me into a victim, or herself into my savior. If we had failed, she wouldn’t have judged me as defective or broken; and she wouldn’t have loved me (or herself) any less. And that is why it worked.

Life is full of paradoxes like this.

▶ Can we pursue freedom without clinging to it so tightly that we strangle its potential?
▶ Can we be with people in pain without trying to take it away or make it a big deal?
▶ Can we put ourselves in service of each other, without being attached to the outcomes?

Please join us tomorrow and meet the woman who helped me understand how freedom is earned.

Hear directly from her what it was like learning to step on me, without any knowledge of anatomy or physiology, and what on earth gave her the humility and gumption to believe she could help me when so many others had tried and failed. (I’ve never asked her this, so I have no idea what her answer will be!)

I will also be giving you an introduction to the Kinetix methodology, which emerged out of my experience with Jess. And I’ll answer any questions you have about the Kinetix Academy.

We can be powerful forces for healing; or impediments that block its potential.

To the degree we are capable of harming each other is the degree to which we can heal together.

Kinetix reveals our social wounds; which means it has the potential to heal them.

You can do this, too, if you show up for life with a heart full of love and the gumption to step into the unknown.

If you don’t have a partner, consider joining us inside The Human Freedom Project membership.

We’ll do this together.

With love,
Elisha