What if healing is not about fixing yourself, but learning how to finally meet yourself with honesty, compassion, and accountability?
In this episode of Rooted & Resilient, I sit down with Tess, a therapist, coach, and deeply reflective practitioner whose work centers on trauma, addiction recovery, shadow work, emotional healing, self-inquiry, nervous system awareness, and helping people reconnect with who they are beneath their protective layers.
Tess shares her powerful personal story of growing up as a highly sensitive child, navigating childhood trauma, addiction, endometriosis, and a life-threatening medical crisis that left her in a coma with a very small chance of survival. After waking up, she had to learn how to walk again and spent years rebuilding her physical health. Tess describes this experience as one of the hardest things she has lived through and also the moment that changed everything. In her words, almost dying saved her life.
Together, we explore what it means to rebuild from the inside out. Tess shares how working with a teacher helped her learn self-inquiry, connect with her body, question the illusion of the mind, and begin living more from the heart than from old protective patterns. We talk about shadow work, accountability, defensiveness, perfectionism, stubbornness, compassion, inner child healing, victimhood archetypes, addiction recovery, and the slow process of learning how to see ourselves clearly without shaming the parts that helped us survive.
We also discuss the difference between healing and growth. Tess shares how, after years of deep inner work, she eventually reached a point where she no longer wanted to stay in an endless loop of needing to heal. Instead, she began shifting toward simply being, living, feeling, growing, and meeting what arises with more gentleness.
Whether you are navigating trauma, addiction recovery, chronic illness, emotional pain, people-pleasing, perfectionism, shame, or the long process of reconnecting with yourself, this episode offers a grounded and compassionate reminder that healing does not require rejecting who you are. Sometimes it begins by sitting with what is here, telling the truth, softening toward the parts you have judged, and allowing yourself to grow from a place of honesty rather than self-abandonment.
Connect with Tess:
Website: https://uncharteddepths.net
Instagram: @uncharted_depths
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This episode is sponsored by Histamine Tracker, an app designed to help you log meals, symptoms, and possible triggers so you can begin noticing patterns in how your body responds. If you’ve been wondering whether histamine may be playing a role in symptoms like headaches, racing heart, panic-like sensations, flushing, congestion, or other mystery reactions, Histamine Tracker can be a helpful place to start connecting the dots.
Check out Histamine Tracker here:
https://histaminetracker.com/?utm_source=rooted-resilient&utm_medium=podcast
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