Join Matt and Victoria as they discuss what it means to foster post-traumatic growth and resiliency in your healing journey. As we navigate trauma-informed therapeutic interventions in our recovery, we often focus on what happened and can lose sight of what can be gained on the other side truth. Victoria and Matt discuss what it means to move beyond maladaptive ways of coping with our histories to a divine encounter with Christ. As we invite Jesus into our stories, we move from survival from the truth of our experiences to an encounter with wisdom, mercy, compassion, mindfulness and humility.

As always, we hope this episode opens up conversations with those that are walking alongside you in your journey of healing.

Many of us have heard about the inner wounded child, but what about the inner wounded teenager within us?

Victoria and Matt welcome back Laurie Bohrer, a licensed therapist, to explore the many facets of the inner wounded teenager. We explore how this part of us can show up in our adult life and how we react to this often-unannounced broken part of us. We befriend our own rebellious inner teens and bear witness to their struggles with identity and role confusion. As we reflect on better understanding who we were back then we are led to find new ways to love our inner young person. We discuss the reality that back then our coping skills were limited by a young brain. Therefore, as we change the lens on the camera, with our adult hearts and minds, we find an abundance of love and mercy for these parts of ourselves. We hope this inspires you to befriend your own inner wounded teenager to bring forth a deeper sense of compassion and curiosity for this often-neglected part of one’s healing journey.

Thanks for your continued support.

Shout out to the skater girl who has returned to the ice.

Peace and love!

Victoria and Matt

As we begin Season 3 of "When Gathering Light" we return to a topic that often has a resounding effect in our relationships with significant others, spouses, family and friends and that's our trauma histories.

We are all survivors of something. Whether we have survived smaller difficult events or larger woundings, we aren't always cognizant of how they will reveal themselves in our relationships. We agree that Satan will use these injuries to try to separate us from God. It's essential that we find the resources to begin the healing process either with a loved one or on our own.

Victoria and I offer our own humility as we have gone back to therapy to work through some difficult stressful issues in our marriage. We of course try to find some humor in these struggles but as is so often the case we find communicating with love and inviting the Holy Spirit into the hard places brings forth the most fruit. As is always the case with this podcast, we hope to create dialogs amongst loved ones. Fear is mitigated by love when we talk things out and listen with open hearts.

We thank you for all of your support over the last two years. If you have a topic that you would like us to consider or a guest who would offer new light, you can send Matt an email: mattgutbrod@yahoo.com

Peace and Love,

Victoria and Matt