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Health from inside out
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As a society and a world, there is probably no better time to examine one’s mental wellness than the present day. With isolation, distance and for some fear, now being a very present part of personal history, looking at one’s wellness from the inside out some believe is critical to achieving life balance, as well as joy.

“We are three parts: body, mind and spirit,” Miranda LaRee shared. 

Specializing as a Self-Healing Guide, Trauma-Informed Life Coach and Resiliency Master, LaRee’s 209-based business Dawn Healing offers the community a number of workshops, as well as personal guidance for those desiring to dig deeper into their overall mental health and release of any trauma.

LaRee recently sat down with 209 Magazine to offer an understanding of the importance, as well as connection, of mental health to overall wellness. 

“Your body has three components and if we’re not addressing all three then we’re still going to be out of homeostasis,” she said. “To bring it back into homeostasis and we have to get all three in line.”

Yet it’s not something which one can achieve overnight. No different than achieving a physical body or health routine, achieving this takes both time and commitment.

“We start by breaking; by changing ourselves, breaking those generational curses that get passed on to our children, or children we’re around,” she shared, adding teachers and mentors have just as big of an impact on this as parents do.

“Adults have a huge impact on children whether you’re a parent or not,” LaRee shared.

“I feel like I’m here breaking generational trauma,” she continued. “Tragedies happen, but by having the consciousness of what we’re dealing with and developing healthy ways to deal with it. We’re just going to be happier and healthier.”

The child of a mother fighting kidney disease and later being afflicted with it herself, LaRee brings a lot of personal experience to her practice. Applying personal experience to proven practices which help one not only heal, but blossom on the other side of facing topics which are often uncomfortable.

“It’s the beginning,” she said of speaking one’s truth and identifying triggers, as well as traumas. “You don’t want to fake it. You’re not repressing. You’re not going to repress your real feelings, but you’re trying to share how you feel and that begins with your words because then your thoughts and your beliefs become your actions.”

LaRee acknowledged that life isn’t easy. Every person is faced with hurdles or struggles which are uniquely theirs. It’s how one proceeds through the muck and struggle which will determine their path from there forward.

Using herself as an example, she shared a story of preparing for her first kidney transplant at the age of 32. Faced with mortality and the life she wanted to lead for herself, as well as her children.

“Realizing how unhappy I was and how much I was suffocating,” she said. “I felt like all of these things, it was like a midlife crisis at 32.”

A midlife crisis which eventually led to divorce, as well as facing a reality that her life just might look different post-transplant and making peace with it all.

“All of that was what led me to who I am,” she said, offering there are no regrets on marriage or of any of her early life.

“I think self-love is huge,” she continued. “Self-worth in and of itself has several components and working with your inner child and receiving your inner child. Having a relationship with your inner child.”

Clarifying that one’s inner child can be any age from three to 27, she stressed the importance of having that relationship and knowing that version still exists and how much you let it control in your life.

“Before surrender felt like giving up and telling the universe I’m okay with this, and then I’m telling the universe I want more dialysis and that wasn’t true,” she said of coming to terms with the changes in her life path. “Instead, I found acceptance to be very empowering. I could live a life that I’m very proud of, even while I’m sick. I looked back and I wasn’t like I had been. I didn’t put my life on hold.”

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A powerful shift, which is a prime example of how one can reflect on their life and circumstances and make a conscious decision to shift the pattern and the path which they may continue to travel. 

“I made this decision to officially stop waiting on the waitlist. I was on the waiting list for kidney,” she said of a second transplant which came later, “but I wasn’t going to wait. I wasn’t putting my life on pause, hoping for this kidney that could never come.

“If I have to spend the rest of my life on dialysis, what is it going to look like?” she confided of a conversation she had with herself. “How am I going to show up? What is my intention with this life? What example am I going to give my children? My children are literally the driving force between all of it.”

LaRee shared that being a living example of resiliency for her children served as great motivation in her transformation of living a fuller life.

“I think the first thing is you have to have the willingness to look at yourself and be aware and all of that is still going to come from taking ownership,” she shared. “A lot of people want to be able to blame someone else. What are you going to do? It’s not their responsibility to fix it. They’re not living your life; they’re off doing their own thing. So, taking responsibility and saying that it’s not a fault thing, it’s not a blame thing. What am I going to do now with this?”

It also comes down to self-awareness.

“I think you have to really understand how your energy works,” she stated. “I think we need to understand the importance of your intention in the world and then a lot of people think intention setting is the same as goal setting and they’re not. Intention setting is how you’re showing up. How you arrive in the world, and I think that’s what’s really important to know your intention every day.”

Equally important, LaRee shared that in this time of isolation, frustration and judgment, looking out is also needed to be better, well-adjusted individual.

“Giving people the benefit of a good intention because I believe people in general are good,” she said. “We, everybody has a villain story and everyone has a hero’s story. We are all that in someone’s story with somebody.”

And everyone has the opportunity to craft their own story.

“The awareness just changes your life,” she concluded of facing one’s trauma and inner dialogue. “You have a new perspective and when you have a new perspective you have a new reality. In that new reality you start to know that anything is possible.