When the Practice Becomes Personal

How a car accident brought together what I had been learning about letting go, self-trust, and freedom.

For months, I had been writing and talking about letting go, self-trust, and emotional freedom.

I had read the books. Studied the research. Created the posts. Practiced the tools.

Then I was in a car accident.

And suddenly, the ideas I had been exploring were no longer concepts.

I needed them.

When everything changes in a moment

Pearly 1.0 after the accident

I was driving alone to meet my son and his family at the marina for a day on the boat.

I was making a left turn from a side street onto a local highway when an oncoming pickup hit the left rear side of my Subaru Crosstrek.

I remember the impact.

The airbags.

The shaking.

I was hyperventilating and could not seem to make my body stop.

And then people began to appear.

An off-duty fireman came to my passenger window and began checking on me. A retired EMT arrived and took my pulse and asked me questions.

Then, through a remarkable twist of timing, my son happened to drive through the intersection. He recognized my car, turned around, and came back.

In the middle of the chaos, I remember having a very distinct feeling:

I was in loving, capable hands.

That feeling continued long after the accident.

Friends and neighbors checked on me. People brought food. They offered rides and help. They made sure I had what I needed.

I have always believed that kindness matters.
But receiving it when you are hurt, frightened, and vulnerable is something else entirely.

Research on trauma recovery has consistently recognized social support as an important part of how people adjust following a traumatic experience. We do not heal in isolation. Sometimes another person’s presence becomes part of the message our body receives:

You are not alone.

I felt that message over and over.

Watching my own mind

I spent the night in the hospital.

I had a cracked sternum and a small pneumothorax on my left lung.

During those first hours, something happened twice that fascinated me.

The first time, medical staff returned with a diagnosis.

I immediately became light-headed. I felt as though I might pass out.

Later, more medical information was delivered.

It happened again.

The timing caught my attention.

I have spent years teaching people to notice their thoughts and emotional responses. One of the foundations of my FLIP IT™ practice is learning to step back and observe what is happening in your own mind.

Metacognition.

Thinking about your thinking.

And there I was, in a hospital bed, watching my body respond to words before my conscious mind had even fully sorted through what I had heard.

I want to be scientifically careful here. I had experienced a serious accident, I was injured, and I had a pneumothorax. I cannot say that the words themselves caused the light-headedness.

But emotional stress can create powerful physical reactions, and traumatic stress reactions can include rapid breathing, a pounding heart, and feeling light-headed or spacey.

What fascinated me was the immediacy of the response.

A diagnosis is information.

But information becomes meaning.

And meaning can change how the body responds.

I have always been fascinated by the connection between the mind and body.

Now I was watching it happen in real time.

When the accident kept happening in my mind

After I came home, my body hurt.

A cracked sternum is a constant reminder that something happened. Every cough, sneeze, reach, or wrong movement has a way of getting your attention.

But I began noticing something else.

I kept replaying the accident.

The turn.

The truck.

The impact.

Over and over.

At first, I found this frustrating.

I did not want to keep thinking about it.

But thinking repeatedly about what happened, feeling shocked or numb, and having changes in concentration, sleep, or emotional responses can all occur after a traumatic event. Most people’s reactions lessen over time, although persistent or worsening symptoms deserve professional attention.

Once again, I became curious.

My mind was doing something.

Instead of immediately judging it, I began watching it.

That is when October came back to me.

The practice of letting go

Last October, the theme for First Create Happiness was Letting Go.

I had become deeply interested in the work of Michael Singer and David Hawkins and the idea that our resistance to uncomfortable emotions can add another layer of suffering.

The practice is deceptively simple.

Notice what you feel.

Stop fighting the feeling.

Allow it to be there.

Let yourself experience it without immediately creating a larger story around it.

I had spent months thinking about this idea.

Now I needed to practice it.

I found a guided letting-go meditation based on Singer’s and Hawkins’ work: Release Any Emotion: Guided Meditation.

It helped me practice something I had been studying for months: allowing an emotion to be present without tightening around it. I did not use it to force the trauma out of my body. I used it as a gentle way to stop fighting what I was feeling long enough to feel it.

I did not try to convince myself that I should not be afraid.

I did not tell myself to be positive.

I did not analyze every detail of the accident.

I simply allowed myself to feel what was there.

Fear.

Shock.

Vulnerability.

I let myself notice the physical sensations that came with those feelings.

And I stopped fighting them.

I want to be clear: I am not suggesting that meditation can magically remove trauma from the body. Nor do I believe we should force ourselves to relive overwhelming experiences alone in the name of healing.

If something feels overwhelming, that is a good time to pause and seek support.

But modern trauma psychology does recognize an important distinction between processing an emotional experience and persistently avoiding it. The National Center for PTSD notes that wanting to avoid trauma-related thoughts and feelings is understandable, but ongoing avoidance can make recovery more difficult.

What I discovered during the meditation was something I had been studying for months.

There is a difference between feeling an emotion and fighting an emotion.

When I stopped resisting the fear, I could observe it.

Fear was present.

But I was also present.

And somehow, that mattered.

Then June came back to me

June’s theme was Self-Trust.

At the end of the month, I recorded a short video about what I had learned.

One of my favorite lines was:

Self-trust feels like staying on your own side.

And another:

Little by little, you become someone you know you can count on.

I loved those words when I wrote them.

After the accident, I began to understand them differently.

Staying on my own side did not mean forcing myself to bounce back.

It did not mean being productive.

It did not mean proving how resilient I was.

For a while, I felt almost semi-comatose.

I sat.

I rested.

I watched television.

I did very little.

My body hurt, and something in me seemed to have simply shut down.

The National Center for PTSD includes feeling shocked or numb among common responses after trauma, and the National Institute of Mental Health notes that people may experience a range of emotional and cognitive reactions following a serious accident.

The old version of me might have become frustrated.

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I get motivated?

I have things to do.

But self-trust asked something different of me.

Stay on your own side.

So I rested.

I went to my medical follow-up appointments.

I had additional X-rays.

I listened to my body.

I accepted help.

I let myself heal at the pace I was healing.

My final follow-up X-ray showed that the pneumothorax had resolved.

My sternum still hurts, but less than it did.

And slowly, I began to feel myself coming back.

I curled my hair.

I put on makeup.

I recorded another short video.

Those may sound like tiny things.

They did not feel tiny to me.

They felt like signs of re-emergence.

Growth is not always obvious while it is happening. Sometimes you recognize it later, when life tests you and you realize you responded differently than the person you used to be.

And then I got into Pearly 2.0

Pearly 2.0 with 8 miles on the odometer

My 2024 Subaru Crosstrek was totaled in the accident.

I called her Pearly.

Recently, I picked up my new car.

A 2026 Subaru Crosstrek.

Same color.

Same interior.

Almost exactly like my old Pearly.

Before I picked her up, I wondered how I would feel.

Would getting into the same kind of car bring the accident flooding back?

Would I feel anxious?

Would my body react before my conscious mind had time to reason with it?

I got into the driver’s seat.

And I felt…safe.

It surprised me.

I drove her home and felt comfortable.

Familiar.

Safe.

Once again, I paid attention.

Avoidance of safe situations that remind someone of a trauma can become part of persistent post-traumatic stress. In evidence-based trauma therapies, people may gradually approach safe memories, situations, or activities they have begun avoiding so the traumatic event does not continue to shrink their world.

I am not suggesting that my drive home was therapy.

It was simply my experience.

But I think my mind received new information that day.

The car is not the accident.

Driving is not the accident.

This moment is not that moment.

The accident happened.

It is not happening now.

And that realization felt like freedom.

When the practice becomes personal

I did not spend last October studying letting go because I knew I would be in a car accident.

I did not choose Self-Trust as June’s theme because I knew my body and nervous system were about to be shocked.

And I did not choose Freedom for July because I knew I would be learning how to drive again without carrying the accident into every mile.

But somehow, the lessons connected.

Letting go taught me to stop fighting every uncomfortable feeling.

Self-trust taught me to stay on my own side while I felt it.

Freedom is teaching me that I do not have to carry one terrible moment as though it is still happening.

This is what I love about personal growth work.

Sometimes we practice a tool quietly for months or years without knowing when we will need it.

We meditate.

We journal.

We learn to notice our thoughts.

We practice gratitude.

We learn how to feel an emotion without becoming the emotion.

We teach ourselves to pause.

At times, the practice can almost feel academic.

And then life happens.

And I am so grateful I had been doing the work.

When life suddenly took a turn I never expected, the practice was already there.

Looking back, I know I responded differently to this accident than I would have even five years ago — with more awareness, more self-compassion, and more ability to stay with myself.

I am still healing.

My body still hurts.

I still occasionally notice the accident trying to replay in my mind.

When it does, I am learning not to panic because the memory appeared.

I can notice it.

I can remind myself that it is a memory.

I can feel my feet on the floor.

I can look around the room.

I can breathe.

I can say:

That happened then. I am here now.

And then I can choose what I want to give my attention to next.

Maybe that is the lesson I have been moving toward all along.

Letting go does not mean pretending something did not happen.

Self-trust does not mean knowing exactly what to do.

And freedom does not mean we never feel fear.

Sometimes freedom is allowing yourself to feel what is real, trusting yourself enough to stay present with it, and slowly learning that you do not have to carry the moment forever.

The accident happened.

It is part of my story now.

But it is not happening now.

And little by little, I am learning to put the weight down.