Joy of feeling free

The JOY of climbing to the top!!!! I was so full of joy after I auto-belayed down. I did it! I actually wasn’t expecting to get to the top. I remember thinking half-way up, this is amazing that I got this far, and I think I’m gonna belay down now. But then I kept scanning…

How Hope Might Help Us

Hope was an amazingly brilliant option then, and it might also be an amazingly brilliant option now. While I’m reflecting specifically on my personal trauma recovery, I think many of us are bewildered by the amount of darkness and suffering in our world (personally, locally, nationally, globally). Of course sometimes even if we take the…

The Gift of Compassion

Each July, my body reminds me that August is the month when I lay half dead on the side of the road after my car rolled seven times off the 101 freeway. Even this July—14 years out— part of my body tenses up as it implicitly remembers the pain and trauma it went through in…

Interview with Hello Darkness

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by the YouTube channel Hello Darkness: Stories that Transform. In the interview, I share: It was such a special experience, and an honor to do. I hope it’s encouraging!! Here’s the interview if you’d like to listen: Warmly,Robyn Feature Image: This was a recent “glimmer moment”! I took…

The Start of My Healing Journey

I haven’t shared this information here, but doctors said I had a 3% chance of surviving the multiple extreme injuries from my rollover car accident in 2011. At the time, I didn’t know this—nor did I know that I’d make a full recovery years later. During the years of recovery— when so much was unfamiliar,…

Available For Joy in the Midst of Pain

I got to speak at Westmont College earlier this month! I shared my trauma story as well as two of the things that helped me be available for joy in the midst of pain. It’s been through the deeper pain that I’ve been able to experience greater joy. The two things that I shared are:…

How Lengthening Movements Helped Me Heal

Bessel Van Der Kolk says that for healing to happen after trauma, we need to feel ways and do things that “directly contradict the helplessness, rage and collapse that are part of trauma, and thereby regaining self-mastery” (The Body Keeps the Score, page 4). Even though my body underwent huge trauma after being collapsed in…

Indelibly both/and

Pain and joy oftentimes live right next to each other. And that’s my experience of the month of August: August is the month where I endured the most pain and trauma that I’ve ever experienced in my life. And it’s also the month where I’ve grown to stand in awe of how much healing and…

Relearning to Walk

Come with me to the carpeted hallway of my parents’ house, 13 years ago. It’s honestly amazing that I can’t remember if I was wearing my pink eye patch or whether I’d already graduated to “prism” glasses (because I had felt so embarrassed for wearing an eye patch and having a crossed eye). Though there…

Welcoming the Robyn Broadus Therapy blog

This blog has certainly changed from the time I started it 7 years ago! I’d like to share with you the story of how it began, then introduce you to what it is now: I began this blog in 2015, as a creative way to stay connected with family and friends while I worked in…