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trauma Recovery
Mentorship for women

Coaching + Community

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score

Navigating complex trauma recovery can be overwhelming and isolating.
Finding the resources that work for you and integrating those tools into your daily life is really challenging. We often need relational support, understanding, and encouragement to help us develop an inner compassionate foundation and healing relationship with ourselves. The Survivor Wise Mentorship offers education and resources within a compassionate healing relationship and community to promote integration and progress.

Tell me more about the survivor wise mentorship

The Survivor Wise Mentorship is a survivor-driven program that provides access to trauma-informed, science-backed recovery tools practiced relationally through compassion, coaching, and community. The program prioritizes developing a healing relationship with yourself by cultivating self-trust, self-compassion, self-empowerment, and self-agency.

What Mentorship Offers:

  • Trauma education offered in an accessible and relatable way

  • Survivor insight around trauma recovery modalities

  • Holding space for self-exploration and understanding

  • Building support and resources around the ways trauma affects the present

  • A compassionate lens around the impacts of trauma

  • An introduction to parts work, somatic support, emotional literacy, nervous system regulation, and attachment/relational healing

  • Connection to a survivor community

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What Mentorship DOES NOT Offer:

  • Licensed clinical diagnosis, practice, or cure

  • Licensed therapy

  • An expectation or requirement to retrieve or revisit past traumas

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How will I receive support?

Components of
survivor wise Mentorship

14-Week Program for Women: Coaching + Community
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  • Compassionate Foundations Course: 14 Weeks of online learning modules on complex trauma recovery topics

  • Compassionate Foundations workbook designed for self-discovery and reflection

  • Weekly exercises to help you build a recovery toolbox

  • Weekly one hour 1:1 ZOOM coaching calls with Sara

  • Weekly post meeting reflection notes and healing tools to consider

  • Support throughout the week via instant messaging

  • 3 support group ZOOM calls with other mentees in the program

  • Curated Mentee Community Chat on SLACK

  • Access to the Survivor Wise Recovery Library

Financial investment for mentorship
14 Weekly and Automated Payments of $200
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Meet your mentor:
1:1 coaching

Hi! I'm Sara, and I am a complex PTSD survivor turned trauma-trained recovery mentor. To me, a mentor is an experienced and empathetic guide. A recovery mentor provides perspective, compassion, emotional support, and witnessing as one who has walked the path too. I am passionate about empowering other survivors to own and direct their recovery journey. I use my trauma recovery training and lived experience to help mentees connect to their own inner wisdom and healing power. For me,  a big component of complex trauma healing has been repairing the relationship I have with myself. This perspective informs the way I work with mentees. Survivors are the experts on their journeys. Utilizing parts work, somatic support, attachment healing, and self-agency, I hold space for mentees to learn how to be on their own side, to learn how to have a healing relationship with themselves.

 

profesional experience

  • Level 1 NARM (Neuro-Affective Relational Model) Informed Professional

  • Internal Family Systems Informed Introductory Training

  • Currently working toward the Somatic Attachment Certificate with the Embody Lab

  • Ongoing Supervision by another practitioner

  • Bachelor’s Degree in Biology with Education Certification & Writing Certification

  • 15 Years of Personal Research Around Complex Trauma, Family Dynamics, Generational Trauma, Somatic Healing, Relational Healing, Internal Family Systems, Etc.

  • 8 Years Experience Facilitating Trauma Recovery Groups

  • 7 Years Experience Mentoring Women in Trauma Recovery Programs

lived experience

  • A recovering complex PTSD survivor

  • An understanding of what it is like navigating the trauma recovery system and the challenges that brings

  • An understanding of trauma from a lived experience point of view

  • An understanding of what it is like using and practicing trauma-informed tools

  • An understanding of the day-to-day, in the trenches, type work that healing is

  • A compassionate lens around trauma-related behavior and how it shows up

  • A passionate belief in the inherent wisdom and capacity of survivors to heal and recover

What mentees are saying about Recovery mentorship?

Compassionate FOundations
Phase ONe of the survivor wise mentorship
A Healing Relationship With Self Is The Aim Of Mentorship

Whether we are curious about parts work or interested in befriending our bodies, whether we are processing the past or learning to live in the present, a healing relationship with ourselves is the key to deep and long-lasting recovery, yet it is often one of the most difficult relationships to repair as a complex trauma survivor. Internalized shame and self-criticism tend to be our home base, and even as we enter therapy and recovery, we may struggle with the weight of constant self-criticism, self-judgment, self-rejection, and self-loathing. We may feel stuck, unable to access the change and growth we so desperately want.

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"When we are mindful of our struggles, and respond to ourselves with compassion, kindness, and support in times of difficulty, things start to change. We can learn to embrace ourselves and our lives, despite inner and outer imperfections, and provide ourselves with the strength needed to thrive."

Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer - The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion - mindful.org

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How do we cultivate a compassionate foundation within to support us through our healing and recovery?

In my experience, self-compassion is actually built relationally, when our experience is seen, heard, and understood by another, when we realize that we aren't alone in our story, when we can co-regulate and resonate with safe people. These are the moments that slowly accumulate into a healing relationship with ourselves. They are often moments we didn't experience growing up, and so self-compassion feels elusive. The aim of the Survivor Wise Mentorship is to help survivors develop an inner compassionate foundation through relational safety, trust, and understanding.

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Compasionate Foundations

What is covered in the
Compassionate foundations program?

The Compassionate Foundations program is grounded in two important trauma-informed recovery concepts: curiosity and compassion. Through curiosity, we come to healing with an open mind and a desire to understand ourselves and our behaviors through a trauma lens. We begin to see that our responses make sense given what we have experienced. As we begin to better understand ourselves and our responses, we start to develop compassion for ourselves and our stories. Through compassion, we cultivate hope in our capacity to grow and heal beyond our trauma.

This program is divided into two main sections:
Getting Curious - Understanding Complex Trauma
Getting Compassionate - Creating a Recovery Recipe

This recovery mentorship will focus on the basics of complex PTSD recovery, including understanding how trauma impacts the nervous system, dissociation, and shame, as well as recovery tools such as shame resilience, boundary setting, and more. This program will introduce you to parts work, somatic support, emotional literacy, and nervous system regulation. The goal of this program is to give you a solid compassionate foundation from which to continue your recovery journey.

Getting Curious
Understanding Complex Trauma

Introduction to Recovery Essentials

Week 1: Getting Oriented

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Getting Curious - Understanding Complex PTSD

Understanding Trauma and Your Nervous System

Week 2: Unmet Developmental and Neurological Needs

     The Creation of the Inner War

Week 3: Mapping Out Your Nervous System

     Smoke Alarm and Watch Tower

     Polyvagal Theory and Fight, Flight, and Freeze
 

Understanding Dissociation - The First Protector

Week 4: In the mind: Fragmentation, Compartmentalization, and Identity Loss

Week 5: In the body: Depersonalization, Derealization, and Time Loss
 

Understanding Shame - The Second Protector

Week 6: Getting to Know the Inner Critic

 

Week 7: Cultivating Rest Practices

Getting Compassionate
Creating a Recovery Recipe

Getting Compassionate - Creating a Recovery Recipe

Shame Resilience

Week 8: Standing up to the Inner Critic and Setting Internal Boundaries

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Emotional and Nervous System Regulation

Week 9: Unpacking Your Relationship with Emotion

     Decoding the Messages of Emotions

     Body Awareness, Interoception, and Cues

Week 10: Navigating Trauma Triggers

     Safety Plans

     Body-Based Regulators

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Identifying Needs and Boundaries

Week 11: Unpacking Your Relationship with Receiving

     Exploring Overworking, Human Giver Syndrome, and Resentment

     Identifying Needs Via Emotional Awareness

     Self Care Routines

Week 12: Unpacking Your Relationship with Boundaries

     Boundaries as Defining Who We Are

     Boundaries with Self: Self Trust

     Boundaries with Others: Hoops of Trust

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Asking For Help

Week 13: Asking For Help

     Unpacking Why It Is Hard to Ask for Help

     Relational Healing: Trust, Boundaries, and Limits

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Week 14: What are my next steps?

Frequently Asked Questions
How long are the mentorship programs?

Each mentorship program lasts 14 weeks, with an option to continue working with Sara through the different stages of the mentorship.

How do I apply for the mentorship program?

To apply for mentorship, consider which Stage 1 program you are most interested in. Then, complete the mentorship application to schedule a discovery call.

What are Sara's training and credentials?

I am not a licensed therapist or counselor. My expertise is grounded in my sixteen years of lived experience navigating complex trauma recovery, therapy, and education. I have a bachelors degree in Biology and a secondary education teaching license, which has deeply influenced how I approach and research trauma recovery topics and spread education and awareness on those topics. As a complex trauma survivor, I had to learn to advocate for my own recovery and treatment in a mental health system that in many ways fails to acknowledge and address the layers of complex PTSD. Throughout my recovery journey, I have facilitated a variety of support groups, mentored women, and have been mentored myself. Several years ago, I returned to school to complete a Writing Certificate with the intent to use my voice and experience to help other survivors get access to the knowledge, tools, and options they needed to recover from complex trauma. Since then, I have participated in trainings to become "IFS-informed" to support my understanding and practice of parts work.

What is the financial cost of mentorship?

At Stage 1, each 14 week mentorship program is $200 a week for 14 weeks. If you continue into other stages of mentorship, the weekly price gradually decreases.

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