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Hi Folks! I am Melinda Zappone, creator of the Toolbox Approach to inner work and author of "You Are Not Broken". This book encourages breaking free from a fixing yourself mindset. Its content comes from nearly two decades of experience as a trauma therapist and a lifetime of trying to find my own way back to myself after a deeply entrenched pattern of holding things. In the protection of ourselves and others, we all develop these versions of the story that are not the real story and it blocks us from ourselves. That is why I promote tools rather than telling as if we know the problems like that.
Right at the forefront of this, I am going to invite you to notice my use of the word folks in my opening. I hope it lands well with you because that to me that word is one of welcoming and creating a holding space with you, almost like a family gathers. Writing about the phases of healing in my Toolbox Approach, I envisioned you all out there as "my folks" or "my people", people who sense their brokenness as an invitation to understand themselves but may have ended up with a wrongness and fixing mentality. Others of you are coming to this as resistors, repressors, suppressors, and may outsource your pain to your job or other things to move on from it, and you are my folks, too.
The invitation to know ourselves calls to you, whoever you are, watching and coming here. I believe that joining the community of people doing inner work is a sense of "folks". We feel each other if we do not know each other. Whether you are coming here to learn about the book or my Toolbox Approach, or just coming out of curiosity at some of the resources out there for "doing the work", the concept that we are all folks and connected here is helpful because the heroic journey can be a solo one at times and trust in others doing their journey can form a sense of presence and attunement that you are not alone
While you are here on my author website, you'll notice a recurring theme. That theme is the message that you are not broken, but what does that phrase mean? It means something very unique despite the familiarity of the phrase being used “out there”. I have searched the title on Amazon, and many books have it, but here, it includes the following: "Thank you for feeling this way because this is your invitation to your awakening". This is an awakening to the concept of repair, which requires tools for seeing the fragmented way you have been understanding yourself, what has happened you, how you hold that story in your body and in the body centers of yourself that can't speak about what happened and hold it all much deeper. The brokenness is the way this all feels, and it is your invitation to inner work with The Toolbox Approach.
It is interesting to me how much more we value physical pain over mental and emotional pain. It is more easily seen as beneficial, even though it can be very uncomfortable. This obvious symptom that something is wrong with your body is seen as a lifesaver. For example, a lump and early detection of breast cancer is seen as the best predictor of survival. If you don’t pay attention to a painful lump, you could die. Emotional and/or mental brokenness is equally a lifesaver because it tells you that something is wrong with the way your life is going. It is a sign that something needs attention and repair, whether it is the way you think about the world or what you are doing in the world, or both. The pain is saying, “Hey, this doesn’t feel right!”.
I propose that the way to figure out how to get back on course is through the exploration or inner work process, which may involve reaching in through self-help books, workshops, friends, support groups, therapy, or whatever seems right for you. As long as you want an approach, it will be there. The Toolbox Approach is one that is there. It proposes several phases of healing I call: Narrative Healing, Reprocessing Healing, and Relational Healing. You decide to enter, and you decide what is right in terms of the tools you find useful when they are revealed. Remember, when you are that student who is ready, everything is a lesson towards inner openness, but you will never be ready if you are busy protecting brokenness; you look at brokenness like an invitation.
Too many of us seem to be searching for something “out there” to make our lives complete. We feel alienated, lonely, and empty. No matter what we do or have, we never feel fulfilled. This feeling of emptiness or intense loneliness is what I call brokenness, and it is our clue that we are off course, and that we need to repair. Often, we think that the fix lies in a new partner, house, car, job, or whatever. Not so. The repair concept requires tools for finding things, these things lead to our Higher Selves. I believe that what all of us are really searching for is this special essence within ourselves. When we are far from our Higher Self, we feel homesick for our own specialness, we sense we have gone away from something. Come home and enter the website now, look for the Introduction to The Toolbox Approach found in You Are Not Broken, and consider yourself one of our "folks".
Find me on:
LinkedIn and I can invite you to the ENYA, Everyone Needs You Always Community
Substack: Holding Space, Melinda Zappone healing article subscription
Patreon: Enter the Phases of Healing Courses
Facebook: ENYAcare community Page & Etsy EnyaCares Marketplace
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