A Time to Heal

Welcome–

Thank you for subscribing and reading this first (official) Oversoul Letter. 

Thank you to my family, friends, and mentors for encouraging me to share my healing experiences these past several years.

Opening up about the deeply personal experiences I share in this letter feels vulnerable, but if my experience helps even one other person, that’s worth it.

I started Oversoul with the goal to help individuals and families heal from trauma and navigate periods of deep transformation. 

Many of us carry quiet burdens and silent pains, but we do not need to suffer alone. 

Together, we will create a sacred space to help each other through our challenges and build a more compassionate future for our children. 

Ecclesiastes 3 writes that, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:

…A time to be born and a time to die;

…A time to get, and a time to lose;

…A time to kill, and a time to heal.”

Now, more than ever, our world needs healing.

This is our time to heal.

I share my story to help you know that whatever stage of your journey you’re in, happiness, growth, peace, and purpose await you on the other side. 

We’re all in this together, so don’t lose hope!

My Healing & Transformational Journey–

My personal healing and transformational journey began 4 years ago when I lost my business partner, friend, and father-in-law, Paul, to death by suicide. 

On a fall evening, I received a call from my wife asking if I had seen her dad recently. No one could find him. His car was missing and his location services were turned off. 

Immediately, I assumed the worst.

Sadly, the police confirmed our fears later that night that Paul had died. 

Two years before Paul’s death, Paul suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) from an automobile accident. For years, Paul lived in unrelenting pain–

Simple tasks left him spinning and often caused intense migraine headaches that lasted hours, or days. 

When Paul took his own life, he left a note to our family explaining that he loved us, but that he could no longer bear the pain he carried.

Dark Night of the Soul

I’ll never forget the fear, guilt, pain, anger, and shame I felt from losing Paul. 

Like many of Paul’s family and friends, I blamed myself for his passing. How did I miss the warning signs? Why didn’t I recognize the depth of his physical and emotional pain? 

I cycled daily through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

I thought constantly about the last interactions I shared with Paul, and beat myself up wondering if I could have saved him had I acted more urgently. 

Everyday I felt an immense hole in my heart. I mourned for my sweet wife and the loss of her father in her life. I agonized watching my baby girl try to understand why her “Papa” was no longer around to hug and snuggle her. 

I felt completely broken, and I had no idea what to do with myself. 

Coping

I have few memories of the year after losing Paul–a common experience for people affected by traumatic loss. I felt disassociated from life, unable to connect and process my emotions, or hold space for others. 

I fell into depression, going through the motions of day-to-day life, but emotionally severed from the moment. 

I felt trapped in the past, on the day Paul died. Day and night, my mind repeatedly brought me back to the tragic scene. I felt anxious in a way I never previously experienced.  

My family noticed the changes in me and recommended I start therapy to work through my grief. After several sessions, with multiple different therapists, I felt worse than before. 

I felt that the therapists I spoke with did not hear me, nor did they fully empathize with my emotions. I felt pathologized, and their recommendations for antidepressants infuriated me.

Feeling more lost than ever, I canceled further therapy appointments and resolved to “power through” with life and work on my own, which of course didn’t work. 

I felt overwhelmed, lost, afraid, and after a time, utterly numb. 

I coped, unconsciously, by playing video games late into the night. Immersing myself in the intense action of a video game momentarily distracted me from my grief, pain, sadness, and anxiety. 

But when the game ended, I felt the flood of despair return like waves crashing through my body. I felt aches and pains all over. I started to feel distanced from myself, in an inexplicable way.

The late night video games reflected the larger disassociative pattern of my life at the time, and as a result my work, relationships, and health suffered. 

I felt numb to the world around me, lost in a seemingly endless nightmare. Wandering strange roads, half asleep, feeling like a shell of my former self.

Hope Returning

A year after Paul passed, I experienced what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening. 

At home, I sat on the sofa while my wife cleaned and my 2-year old daughter played on the floor. 

As usual during this period, I sat completely zoned out–disassociated from the present moment. 

My daughter tried to get my attention, but I didn’t notice her. 

She called out to me, “Daddy, Daddy,” several times, and I failed to notice or respond. 

Then, my daughter did something that forever changed me–

After ignoring her several times, she climbed onto my lap, put both hands on my face, and looked directly into my eyes.

She said nothing as she gazed at me, but I started to feel a lump rising in my throat as I choked back tears. 

I felt a pain in my chest, and then I started to bawl. 

I could not remember the last time I cried. 

Startled, my wife ran over to comfort me. In her intuition, she asked me what I was feeling.

Still bawling, I explained how our daughter tried to capture my attention several times, but that I did not notice her until she was right in my face.

I cried deeper as I processed the reality that I remembered hardly anything from the past year since Paul died. 

I looked at my sweet daughter and mourned that I had missed precious time with her in my grief. I felt that I had slept through the last year, going through the motions, but removed from the moment–constantly reliving the pain of losing Paul. 

As my wife and daughter hugged and consoled me, I felt awakened from a long, dark night. 

When my daughter placed her hands on my face, she blessed me. She gave me a tender, loving gift to pull me out of my dark memories into the light of the present.

I was lost, and this tiny little girl rescued me from my sorrow.

I knew that I could not continue living that way–

I could no longer run from my grief; I needed to turn and face it, feel it, and allow it to move through me, which seemed the most daunting challenge I’d ever faced.

I saw my daughter, my wife, and a picture of Paul on the wall, and something clicked deep within me. 

I recognized that I needed to get myself right, because I did not want to miss another moment with my daughter. 

You Can Heal Your Life

As I began to awaken from my grief, my lovely wife, Lexi, was already tuned into the healing paradigm. 

Lexi’s strength, understanding, and emotional intelligence pulled us through this challenging time of our lives. 

Lexi shared with me a book she read, titled, “You Can Heal Your Life,” by Louis Hay.

The theme of the book is just that, you can heal your life!

Lexi helped me understand how I could move from a victim mentality to an empowered mindset, and take control of my healing journey. I did not need to remain stuck in grief.

How Lexi managed a positive mindset so soon after losing her dad, I don’t know. 

Without Lexi’s strength and perspective, I likely would not have found the resolve to change on my own. She provided the burst of energy I needed to pull out of my depression and embark on the healing path. 

The Healing Path

A year after losing Paul, Lexi and I entered our third year of marriage together, and we shared a special anniversary we humorously called “Invigorate-3,” (Invig-3, for short.)

Invig-3 represented our commitment to each other, our families, and our daughter to enter a new chapter and put the pieces of our lives back together. 

(As a side note, we’ve called every year since Invig-4, Invig-5, etc… as we’ve continued to build back stronger).

We started Invig-3 on our anniversary with a “river ceremony” up the canyon hosted by a holistic healer, foot zoner, and friend, named Shae. 

Shae introduced us to a world we’d never considered before, but that we tried to remain open to. 

I felt a little out of sorts sitting shirtless in the forest, by the river, with a group of strangers, while a woman beat a handheld drum in front of my face to open my chakras–

This was all new territory for me as a proud, lifelong skeptic. 

Little did I know, the river ceremony was only the tip of the holistic healing iceberg I’d later explore.

After the drumming, a guided meditation, and a prayer, Lexi and I joined the group and waded into the flowing, frigid water for a cold plunge. 

I felt every cell in my body reject the cold as I dipped my head under the water for the first time. My body panicked and screamed for me to save myself, which I later learned was my body’s “fight-or-flight” response triggering.

Lexi and I held shivering hands, and after a while, the water didn’t seem so cold. 

Shae encouraged us to ground our feet in the earth, and allow the river to wash away our pains.

When we finally stood up and exited the river, I felt amazing.

I felt baptized, reborn into a new perspective with a more holistic vision for my life. 

Shae helped open my perspective that I needed deep healing. She taught me about the connections between mind and body, which she called the energy-body. She taught me how our energy-bodies hold on to our traumatic experiences, which can manifest as illness if not properly released.

Trauma

When Lexi and I embarked on Invig-3, neither of us expected how deep the healing journey would take us. 

Two bestselling authors and physicians, Bessel Van der Kolk and Gabor Mate, confirmed the mind-body connection Shae taught me about, and the science behind trauma.

Dr. Gabor Mate, in his bestselling book, “The Myth of Normal,” defines trauma as:

 “...not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”

This definition of trauma helped me understand the impact Paul’s death had on me–how I felt depressed, disassociated, anxious, and trapped in recurring memories. Something was happening inside of me related to Paul’s passing–my body reacted to the trauma in many negative ways.

Dr. Van der Kolk in his book, “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” helped me understand that:

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort.”

For me, the past felt vividly alive–I felt trapped in past memories of losing Paul.

Dr. Van der Kolk elaborates on trauma, explaining that for people affected by trauma:

“...Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves.”

That’s exactly how I felt… the numbness, hiding from myself in video games, or disassociating when my daughter tried to get my attention. 

My body held the traumas of losing Paul, and as I came to terms with that truth, I understood that I needed to heal my mind-body connection–the energy-body Shae described.

Dr. Van der Kolk further explains how traditional talk therapies cannot always heal the mind-body connection severed by trauma. He explains:

“The imprint of trauma does not ‘sit’ in the verbal, understanding part of the brain, but in much deeper regions—amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, brain stem—which are only marginally affected by thinking and cognition.”

He goes on to explain that these parts of the brain cannot be “...reached–and cannot be changed–by reasoning and understanding.”

This brought me peace as I reflected on my earlier talk therapy sessions, and how they felt ineffective, and frankly troubling, to me. 

I needed to go deeper than run-of-the-mill talk therapy to heal my trauma. I needed to rewire my nervous system, escape fight-or-flight mode, and literally heal at the cellular level. 

Somatic Healing for the Mind-Body Connection–

Both Dr. Mate and Dr. Van der Kolk recommend somatic healing modalities to address the roots of trauma and help people reconnect with their bodies.

Some of the recommended mind-body, somatic healing modalities are listed below:

*Breathwork–Training the body to relax by focusing on breath. Also includes holotropic breathwork, a form of deep rhythmic breathing that helps release suppressed trauma.

*Meditation–Learning to calm and expand the mind through various techniques. 

*Yoga & Movement Therapy–Moving the body slowly, and intentionally to reconnect with feelings and sensations–particularly effective for healing disassociative symptoms. 

*Dance–Moving the body in a safe environment. 

*Humming, chanting, & singing–Expressing the vagal nerve that connects the brain and gut to release trauma. 

*Cold Water Exposure & Heat Therapy–Alternating the body between extreme cold temperatures and extreme warm temperatures, like Wim Hoff methods, cold plunges, and saunas.

*Compassionate Inquiry–A form of empathetic, non-pathologizing talk therapy developed by Dr. Mate. 

*Internal Family Systems Therapy–A therapeutic model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz that views the mind-body connection as “plurality,” containing many different “parts” within a person, each with their own goals, and subpersonalities. 

*Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy–Deep, safe healing with psychedelic medicines, like psilocybin (magic mushrooms), ayahuasca (Amazonian psychedelic tea), and MDMA. 

During my healing journey, I practiced all of these modalities and had profound transformative experiences with each of them.

I could talk for ages about the benefits I received from each of the modalities.

I will talk more about each of these modalities in the coming weeks, but know that if you feel trapped by trauma, complete healing and greater resilience are possible through these wonderful methods. 

As I worked to heal my mind-body connection somatically, I discovered the power of non-ordinary states of consciousness for healing. 

Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness–

Each of the methods described above changes neural pathways to connect deeper with the body. Cold plunging, meditation, breathwork, singing, dancing, and especially psychedelics, alter the brain’s frequencies from what we experience in regular, day-to-day life.

In our normal waking hours, the brain typically resonates in the beta (12-30 Hz) range. As we sleep, relax, eat, etc., brain frequencies naturally fluctuate between beta, alpha, theta, and delta states, from lower frequencies to higher frequencies. These are all “ordinary” states of consciousness.

Non-ordinary states then, are frequencies we do not typically experience day-to-day. 

The healing modalities mentioned above expand the mind, and create different brainwave patterns. Sometimes these brainwaves are higher than regular frequencies, such as gamma frequencies. Sometimes they are lower and more sustained frequencies. 

Sometimes the brain creates multiple differing frequencies that amplify and overlap with each other. 

In these non-ordinary states, perception changes as awareness expands. 

In non-ordinary states, defensive aspects of ourselves start to dissolve so that trauma floats to the top of awareness more readily. This affords us an opportunity to address trauma without our egoic minds trying to push the trauma back down. 

It’s a beautiful thing. 

Through these non-ordinary states, I experienced aspects of myself I never previously considered. 

I approached these modalities with the intention to heal from the loss of Paul, but as I learned to put my ego aside, I discovered many other traumas from my life I had repressed. 

At first this experience frightened me–like I opened a can of worms and received more than I bargained for. Over time though, I learned to welcome these repressed emotions and learned to integrate them into my life.

As my wise mentor and aunt, Anja, taught me about non-ordinary states, “If you feel something coming up, don’t push it down. It’s coming up so you can let it out!”

That’s the goal with trauma: let it come up, and then let it out.

Shadow Work

As I worked through non-ordinary states to heal, I experienced within myself what psychologist Carl Jung called “the shadow.” 

The shadow represents the aspects of our minds that the ego pushes down, and represses. These are the aspects of ourselves that we feel uncomfortable expressing, often because of societal conditioning. 

The ego keeps the shadow at bay and fights constantly for control, fearing that the shadow will break out and cause irrevocable damage. 

However, as hard as the ego tries to control the shadow, the shadow will inevitably reveal itself in one way or another. 

Jung taught that one of the most common ways the shadow expresses itself is through “projection.”

Projection takes the aspects of ourselves we’ve repressed, and projects them onto other people. The ego attempts to protect ourselves, and hides the negative aspects from our awareness, instead projecting our negative aspects onto others. 

Essentially, we dislike in others what we refuse to accept in ourselves. 

Like Anja said, as these shadow aspects of myself arose, I needed to learn to acknowledge them and let them go.

This was the scariest, and hardest part of my healing journey. Excrutiating, to be honest. It felt like the refiners fire, as all the repressed aspects of myself came to the surface. 

One of the deepest lessons I learned through this process involved learning to forgive, both myself and others. 

I saw how I projected my fears, judgements, anger, and expectations onto friends, family, business partners, and even people on the street. 

I learned that I held grudges and withheld forgiveness, even when others had apologized, and even when the supposed wrongdoings were relatively small. 

I saw how these negative habits first formed in my life, surrounding trauma I experienced as a kid and teenager. I saw how my ego tried to protect me, how I had repressed my emotions, and how I alienated the people in my life by projecting my shadow. 

I recognized how I especially projected my shadow in the months after losing Paul. I flew off the handle at the smallest offense and I employed more cumulative expletives than any other time in my life. From my shadowy perspective, it seemed everyone was ought to harm me, so I had to work extra hard to protect myself.

Gratefully, I had wonderful, patient, loving guides, mentors, and family to help me through this process as I addressed the hidden aspects of myself–

Lexi, in her infinite grace, was the greatest support to me during this difficult time. 

Coming Back Home to Myself

The painful journey through the shadow eventually led me back home to myself, to the truest aspects of who I really am–parts of myself that I had forgotten due to the impact of trauma. 

Working through my shadow helped me acknowledge the “programming” I received from school, society, and media, which contained what I now call untruths. 

I saw how I identified with parts of myself that were not necessarily true to me, but that I clung to in order to feel safe. 

Releasing these constraints allowed me to remember my own gifts and passions. Freed from anxiety, depression, and disassociative symptoms, I now opened up to bigger questions. 

What is my purpose in life?

How can I serve others?

Who do I need to apologize to?

Who is struggling right now and needing some help?

I felt space opening in my heart. I felt greater sensitivity, compassion, and understanding for the challenges of others. 

My egoic self still existed, but seemed less defensive, more aligned with serving the world than protecting myself. 

This was a big jump for me. 

I started to see the inherent beauty, gifts, and purpose within others. I started to see people for who they really are, rather than the mask the ego puts on. 

I started to realize that we are all in different stages of healing, and that we all grow in our own timing.

I felt released from comparison.

For years prior I beat myself up feeling that in some way I had fallen behind, that the impact of losing Paul knocked me off the perfect life my ego planned for me. 

But that’s an untruth. 

The real truth is this: we all face challenges, big and small, unique to our personal experiences. 

We are all on our own timelines, learning our own lessons, in our own divine timing. 

For some, now is a time to weep.

For others, a time to laugh, or mourn, or dance. 

There really is a season to all things, and for this season of my life, it’s been a time to heal. 

Invitation

If you, or someone you love is currently going through a dark night of the soul, I invite you to join our Oversoul community. 

These days, I rarely find myself going through the bargaining stage of grief, but I still think about how I could have helped Paul if I knew then what I know today. 

As our community grows, we will explore in-depth topics for healing, transforming, and living with authentic purpose. We will celebrate the healing journeys of individuals and families around the world, and learn from leaders in a variety of healing traditions. 

To engage with the community, I invite you and your loved ones to:

1. Follow Oversoul on social media, including YouTube for weekly videos.

2. Subscribe to the Oversoul Letter for weekly ideas, stories, and practices sent to your inbox.

3. Join the Oversoul Group through our website–a paid community with in-depth self-paced courses to follow your own journey.

4. Consider the 1-on-1 guidance program if you feel called to deep work together.

You can find information on all social platforms, and at www.oversoul.life

Much love, and safe journeys.

Your friend in healing,

Tate

Oversoul 2025