Healing from Trauma How Tywanah Evette Transformed Pain into Purpose

Tywanah Evette
[00:00:00] Tywanah Evette: It, it takes emotional intelligence and, um, if you do not do your healing work, you don’t have it. I raised my three children with the emotional intelligence of a fifteen- year- old, because that’s where it stopped. That was my biggest trauma, and that’s where it stops.
[00:00:54] Ed Watters: Today, we’re speaking with Tywanah Evette. She is a spiritual strategist, [00:01:00] a trauma recovery facilitator, a woman’s advocate, bestselling author, and an inspirational speaker. Tywanah, could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please.
[00:01:14] Tywanah Evette: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me here today. I’m really excited about this. Um, so I, I am actually a fourth generation, um, intuitive healer and psychic medium. Um, I help women to heal their trauma, you know, from any abuse, neglect, um, or even just the kids going off to college and not having an identity. Um, and find their purpose and step into their power. Um, I am also the creator of the Heal Her Summit coming up next week. And the, uh, book that, um, I am creating, another one, it’s called Why. Which is a [00:02:00] book of women’s, why they didn’t report abuse.
[00:02:05] Ed Watters: That’s awesome. I, I really like what you’re doing, it’s awesome that you’re helping women that struggle with these things. Uh, many women are struggling out there. Our society is just really negative anymore and I, I think we need to pull together and come together as a nation, as people, and put an end to this abuse. So you’ve got a very interesting story and it’s heart, it’s heart wrenching, you know, so could you please just tell people your story? I’m just gonna shut up and let you go.
[00:02:52] Tywanah Evette: Absolutely, it’s my pleasure. Um, it, it is a sad story, but healing from it is amazing. And helping other [00:03:00] women is just beautiful. But I, my father, um, when I was nine years old, my natural father came looking for me. I never knew that the father my mom had remarried wasn’t my father, because daddy always made me feel like I was his. And he always made me feel like I could do anything. And when daddy was in my life, I remember being happy. But one day this man shows up at my grandmother’s house and, um, my grandmother calls my mother and lets her know that my natural father came looking for me. So I met him a week later and his girlfriend.
And when his girlfriend walked in my nana’s house, you know, I greeted her with a hug. She was warm and beautiful. And when I saw him, I hid behind my grandmother. Um, I knew [00:04:00] then something was off. And he had bought me a bunch of pretty dresses and things like that. I never wanted to wear them, I felt icky. Mom had a nervous breakdown shortly after that and lost her job ’cause her and daddy split up. And we moved to Seattle for a little while and I was really happy there with my aunt and my uncle. And she decided to go to nursing school and so she sent me to live with my father. The night that I arrived, I was sitting on the bed,
I was ten years old, I, I remember I had a white dress on. And, um, his girlfriend, she walks past the bedroom to the door and she’s got like baskets and trash bags. They were arguing and she goes, Baby, I tried. I’ll be back every week to do your hair. [00:05:00] So that night I cry myself to sleep because I miss my mother, I’m in this house with this strange man, I don’t like his energy, and, um, miss Jean is gone. And, um, my father came in that room that night and took my virginity, that went on for five years. He threatened and bullied my mother into remarrying him by using his status in the church and his status with the Department of Immigration to say he would take me permanently.
She’d never seen me again. So she remarried him under those circumstances. But she was a nurse, so she worked nights. And, um, the abuse went on for five years until I had a positive pregnancy test. Um, [00:06:00] I did not tell my mother. I shared with my best friend in high school that I was pregnant, she assumed it was my boyfriend’s who had never touched me. And she went with me to release that child. Um, I held that secret thirty-two years. I was, uh, mom had a terminal diagnosis shortly after, and when I shared with her the abuse, not the pregnancy, I just said he was being inappropriate. She didn’t know what to do, she was dying, um,
she couldn’t, she had no job, she had nothing, she couldn’t support me. So I went and lived in the New York City group home system. I found comfort in becoming a mother [00:07:00] at eighteen, um, by choice. And, um, shortly after that, when I was twenty-one, I married, of course, an abusive man. Because what do I know about, you know, normal good people. You know, I’m, I’m too traumatized to understand good people anymore ’cause daddy was gone. And, um, he was very abusive, I had two children by him. That ended in divorce because I was held at gunpoint while he described how he was gonna take the children’s life and his own and leave me with that memory.
I got away, the kids and I got away. And, um, I married another man who was verbally abusive and threw me and my kids on the street. So I took a break. I’m like, Okay, there’s a pattern here. And [00:08:00] I took a four year break, and I invest in myself, and I’m doing Pilates, and I’m, I’m, I’m feeling good and I’m doing well. I had gone to therapy, you know, I really felt good about myself. So I took a chance on dating again, and I meet this charismatic fourth grade teacher. And I’m like, Yes, I finally healed. How can I get much better than a fourth grade teacher? That man stole my soul. He would belittle and berate me for three days at a time, taking me to the point of a seizure and then saying, Go take your medicine. Because I have epilepsy.
I was never good enough, I was never pretty enough, I was never this enough, I never did that enough. He was the first person when I met him that I realized I had never loved anyone, no man, [00:09:00] except him. I loved his son, who is one of the biggest, brightest bits of sunshine in this world. He and I were very, very close. And I shared with him what happened, he was the first person I opened up to. He took that story to school and him and the teachers had a good laugh about it, even though they’re mandated to report things like that. And he took it to his family and him and his family had a good laugh about it, even though his sister is a domestic violence advocate here in DC.
I had to come to DC, my sister lost her husband suddenly. And when I got back the next day, I took an entire bottle of pills with hot coffee. Drank vinegar to make them melt [00:10:00] and went and laid in the woods. I was tired, I was tired. But if anybody here believes in the ancestral plane, that’s where I was taken. Where I saw daddy and mom. And mom told me I had to come back, I had a purpose. She told me women were waiting for me. I didn’t understand it, and then she pushed me back in my body.
I went on a very long healing journey. I moved up to DC to help my sister, they had a six month old cane corso. She had no idea what to do with him. And, um, she was devastated. I had never seen my sister jello, she was jello when she lost her soulmate. Um, my sister’s this type A, you know, kind of congresswoman type. And [00:11:00] to see her on the edge of the bed where she didn’t even know how to put her stockings on, I didn’t know how to process that. I stayed with my sister for eight months until she healed. But while I lived with her, that’s when I knew I was a healer. Because while I was losing everything and everyone around me, she was healing.
I was filtering her emotions, and even the dog’s sometimes, his emotions. I helped him heal as well. I moved into my apartment, my mother’s voice got undeniably loud. And last February she said, It is time to use your voice. And I’m like, To do what? And I look on Facebook and there’s a call for podcasts, and I’m not even in any of the groups yet. You know, I, I just happened to open it and here it is. And I’m like, Okay, you’re funny lady. [00:12:00] And um, it was the first time, it was the first time that I announced to the world that I’m a healer,
I’m a medium. And I spoke my truth and it felt good. And every time after that I got stronger and stronger and stronger and less and less afraid to speak my truth. Even though my children didn’t wanna be a part of my lives understandably at the time. I, I understood their decision, I respected it. I just, you know, I would send Happy Birthday, I would send money, you know, cards, things like that, and let them have their space. They were all adults when this happened. And, um, I haven’t shut up since, and I won’t, I won’t.[00:13:00]
[00:13:06] Ed Watters: Hey, that, that’s awesome. You know, Tywanah, a lot of people need to find that passion to share and that guidance to give. Because there’s so many people out there taking and they take and they take, but nobody wants to give. And that’s what our world needs so much right now, is people to give back. And that’s what we’re doing here at the Dead America Podcast, we, we believe in stories and the, the enlightenment that people can get out of stories and experience. Every one of us has that experience and it is so important to share, that relieves us emotionally. And it, it allows us to [00:14:00] love again, it, it really helps. So there’s a lot of women out there that need to discover how to come to the forward position of life and share what’s going on, my wife included. She went through similar things in her childhood, and it’s taken fifty-five, fifty-six years to really start getting a, or a grasp on what is happening in her life. So how do women get out of the emotional state and into that advocate state where they can start sharing their story?
[00:14:56] Tywanah Evette: First of all, you, you need help. Um, [00:15:00] I had no support system, but my healing journey was designed that way so that I could teach how to heal. Um, you first have to acknowledge it within yourself because I walked around with a smile for all of this time while I was screaming inside. I had to sit and acknowledge that this actually happened, with me, first. Before you begin sharing with the world, you have to process it yourself. Um, seek help, seek guidance, um, be it a coach, therapist, you know, if, if you have a strong support system, great. Um, but I had no support system, um, other than my ancestors. I will never discredit them. Yeah, for that time. [00:16:00] But, um, you gotta be honest and you have to seek the guidance and then you have to start taking baby steps.
You, you may not be able to tell the big tragedy, right? You may not be able to, I, like, I couldn’t tell my family until the end of 2023. My family didn’t know. I told my best friend and she lost the feeling in her knees and fell because she was like, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, I was with you. Um, but you have to begin sharing in little bits. So even if I didn’t tell the big story, I started sharing tiny bits of myself. Um, I did have kind of a part-time coach, um, and she [00:17:00] would advise me as best as she could, but my journey was designed for me to be alone. Um, but the, the, the first step, the first step is acknowledgement. You have to acknowledge that hurt.
The second step is, we all have an inner child and that inner child is the one who took over when trauma was too much for the 3D body to handle. She’s the one, or he’s the one that stepped forward and took that. Even though you may have the memory and the physical functions of it, it is because of that inner child. Um, journaling, essential. It’s essential to get it down on paper because when you reread that, that’s when you realize this is your truth. That’s when you realize, I, I, I did go through that. But in that journaling [00:18:00] and in that acknowledgement comes strength because that’s when you realize I survived that.
Then you have to release the victim mindset, the woe is me. I behave this way, the excuses, I behave this way because this happened to me. You have to release that. Yes. Um, and once you release that you can stand tall and brave and begin to share, even if it’s not worldwide like I’m doing. Even if it’s with your family and your friends and your support system. Um, but those are the first three steps and they are essential.
[00:18:52] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah. Really, that’s good advice. Tackling it, it, you [00:19:00] need to find support. And a lot of people, they, they are afraid to ask for help when that is one of the most critical steps of recovery is when you need help, you need to acknowledge you need help. So I found podcasting and podcasting gave me the ability to find out who I was and it’s given me the ability to step forward with a voice and learn, by baby steps, how to advocate for others. And once I started doing that, it really made me feel like I was worth, myself, you know, I had a worth of value where [00:20:00] I did not understand my value before. So understanding you do have a gift and a, a purpose, and finding it is important. What’s guidance to try to find that purpose in your life? What are those underlying, you know, steps that we have to take to step into that purpose?
[00:20:33] Tywanah Evette: Your pain is your purpose. It’s that simple. Your pain is your purpose. We, we, we don’t go through these things for nothing. Your pain is your purpose. The very thing that I carried shame for my entire life is the very thing that makes me beautiful. [00:21:00] It’s the very thing that heals women. It was my pain. It was the agony, my trauma. You turn that into your purpose. Your purpose is not to be a graphic designer for Google. That’s no one’s purpose, that’s someone else’s vision. Your purpose is yours alone. We were born with it, we will leave with it. But it’s your pain. It’s that simple. But we overcomplicate it.
[00:21:45] Ed Watters: I like that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of complications in life and understanding that you control these by putting boundaries on your life, [00:22:00] the people, the places, the things, you know? Because those three things, people, places, and things, they control you. And if you learn to control that, that is when you find golden, you know, everything becomes clear. So, so,
[00:22:24] Tywanah Evette: I, it’s so funny you said people, places, and things, because that’s what I teach on my TikToks. I always tell them your boundaries need to be with people, places, and things.
[00:22:39] Ed Watters: Amen. Uh, okay. So let me share with you my muddy shoe theory. It, it’s, life is like, you’re a muddy shoe, and life is a muddy path, and life is, people, places, and things, that’s the [00:23:00] mud that collects on you. And if you’ve ever walked down a muddy trail, you know how heavy it gets. It gets thick and it can build up. You learn quickly to wipe that mud off and scrape it away. The good mud, the good people, places and things, they’re gonna stay up in the tread of your shoe. And you can’t get rid of that unless you hose it out and really get aggressive to get rid of that. So life is like a muddy shoe walking down a trail, you need to find a rock, a stick, uh, whatever, and get rid of that mud because that will allow you to be lighter, cleaner, and it, it will allow you to finish without being tired. So I like to share that with people. [00:24:00] So Tywanah, could you tell us about the Heal Her Summit and the Why Movement?
[00:24:10] Tywanah Evette: Yes, the Heal Her Summit of Global Movement for Survivors of Abuse is a summit that starts next Friday. Um, I’ve been working, I can’t even tell you how hard to put this together, but this came straight from the divine. This was not something I wanted to do. Um, when I heard it, my, my mother is always on my right side, so when she said, Summit, I said, No thanks, and continued on my day. And the next day she goes, Summit.
And I said, See, I’m talking at three next week. It’s on my calendar. And I continued on with my day. And you remember parents back in the day when we didn’t do our chores, how they would wake us up in the middle of the night? [00:25:00] 1:31 AM, it feels like something’s brushing, you know, like this close to me and I hear Summit and I’m like, Oh God, are you kidding me? Like, this happens in the afterlife too? I thought this was over. And I got up and it literally just flowed through me. I had no name, no title, no what, what is it supposed to be? And it all just came to me and by the next morning, the website was done. I called my bestie and she’s like, What are we doing?
And so it is free, we’ve got speakers from all over the world. It is going to be powerful and impactful. We have dropped the ugly divide between religion and spirituality, and we are [00:26:00] coming together. For the purpose of giving women options and showing them that they can heal. But the most interesting thing about it is all of us were abused and so, or have suffered great, great traumas. And we all have different specialties and modalities, we’ve got, you know, uh, people who are in church, we’ve got people who are Buddhist, we’ve got people who are spiritual, and we are just all coming together to love on women. And there are going to be, I can’t even tell you how many freebies, downloads, free consultations,
um, free classes, free courses. Um, I’ve got mental health specialists that, that are providing all these resources that, that are unknown. They’re not like on the national registry [00:27:00] for, for women to heal, um, to find, you know, shelter if they need it and, and things like that. So we, there are a lot of us coming together for this and, um, we’ve had our bumps in the road, but the right people are coming together with the right energy to just love on whoever’s there, whoever’s watching, and let them know that we are all out here fighting for them. Um, through the summit, I’m working on the summit again, and my mother goes, Why? And I said, I don’t know why. We have that kind of relationship and it hit me.
It hit me. And so I added it to the summit page. And it is, I am collecting [00:28:00] 500 women’s whys to place in an anthology. I just want one sentence. Why didn’t you report it? Everybody asks us that. Nobody asks the offender any questions, they get away with whatever. But the people who are traumatized, the survivors, ’cause we’re not victims, are the ones who are asked why. Why this, why that? And so I am collecting 500 women’s whys, I am meeting with publishers, but I also know how to self-publish if we need to. And the proceeds from the book are going back to the survivors. That is not my money, it is not my trauma. Um, each page will have one woman’s Why, because I’m giving her that [00:29:00] voice. I don’t want her mixed up in between.
I want the impact to be that great. You’re taking up the page, you’re taking up space, and this is your chance to use your voice. And they can use pen names, I don’t care if they use SpongeBob Squarepants as their pen name. I’m the only one, my, my, my three colleagues and I, um, the, the, the three women who are on my team voluntarily, who donate their time, their money, and their energy to the causes because they believe in my purpose, we are the only ones who will know who that woman actually is and only so that she can receive her check.
[00:29:54] Ed Watters: I like that a lot. You know, just that simplicity [00:30:00] of your why. You know, if you can figure that one statement out, you can move mountains. And that’s what you’re doing with this movement here. So I congratulate you and I applaud you, and I encourage you to keep doing it. This is only the start is this not? So you, you intend more to come, of these summits then?
[00:30:28] Tywanah Evette: The summits, yes. And the Why Movement, yes. Um, I am right now doing my studies to, um, find out the proper way to begin a nonprofit to help women who have been abused have the resources to heal. Because the first thing that offenders do is affect the finances.
[00:30:53] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s big. And you know, men, [00:31:00] men, they, they can be men, let’s just leave it at that. And, you know, so the, the point behind that is, women, you are people. You have a purpose and it’s a very powerful purpose. Without you, there is none of us because you are the womb of society. And men, to you, you need to understand that and cherish these people. So we are different, men and women, but we live and cohabitate together and we need each other. So the best way to understand each other is communication. Stop ignoring each other and start talking to each other. I find that to be one of [00:32:00] the biggest troubles that we have as society is learning to communicate with each other. What’s your thoughts on that, Tywanah?
[00:32:10] Tywanah Evette: Well, it takes emotional intelligence. It, it takes emotional intelligence and, um, if you do not do your healing work, you don’t have it. I raised my three children with the emotional intelligence of a fifteen-year-old, because that’s where it stopped. That was my biggest trauma, and that’s where it stops. So we have a bunch of, you know, traumatized gentlemen out here who, you know, either their mothers turn them into narcissists or, you know, they, they don’t wanna deal with their trauma and, and they act like five-year-olds. Um, so just as much as we need to heal, men need people to heal them too. And, and, and I [00:33:00] am very connected to a gentleman who does heal men.
So, you know, I, it, it’s not like I can’t refer them to their healing as well. Um, but it, it, it takes healing on both sides. I mean, especially, you know, when we’re divorcing, and, and we’ve got kids from a previous marriage, and there’s all these complications and things involved in life now that weren’t there forty years ago. So gentlemen are, you know, rising up in this movement of they want their grandmothers back. And women are not saying we have a, a problem being in that space, we’re just saying we want to feel safe. We want to feel protected. A lot of us went out and got jobs and, and climbed the corporate ladder, [00:34:00] not because we wanted to leave our children with a babysitter but because we didn’t feel safe or protected.
[00:34:12] Ed Watters: I like that a lot. You know, that, that truth right there, men need to hear. And you know, stepping up and being responsible, that’s really what it’s about. And that emotional intelligence is key. And yes, you’re so right. There’s so many young men, lost, misguided, and it’s up to us as a society to bring that back to the center. And I, I really see a lot of people taking part and helping bring that back. I, I really see a movement starting. Do you feel that?
[00:34:57] Tywanah Evette: Yeah, I feel the inertia of it. Yes, I do. [00:35:00]
[00:35:01] Ed Watters: Yeah, that, that’s really good. So Tywanah, is there anything that we’ve missed that you think we should discuss before we end this?
[00:35:12] Tywanah Evette: No. We, we just have to heal our hurts, we have to heal our hurts. You can’t go around, um, I use the image of a backpack full of bricks or a, remember those old storage locker trunks? I, I always tell my clients, You’ve got this trunk in your subconscious and you’ve put clothes, and cinder blocks, and concrete, and you’re, and you’re trying to hide it, right? It will never hide, it’s always gonna come back in some way, shape, form, or fashion. It’s going to show up. So let’s chip away at it, open up Pandora’s box, get it out, clean everything out, and replace it with goodness and self-love. Um, so, [00:36:00] and I use the chakra system to do it, so
[00:36:05] Ed Watters: Yeah. Good, good. You know, it, it’s okay to be broken. Uh, all, all you need to do is find the glue to put yourself back together, and that glue is gonna be those people, places, and things. Find the right people, the right places, and the right things to put in your life, and that’s glue that will bind you in the right way. So I really, yeah, I really love conversations like this. Go ahead.
[00:36:44] Tywanah Evette: The book that I am in, um, the book that my story is in, my story is called Kintsugi, um, The Making of a Goddess. And it’s a Japanese art where when a ceramic bowl falls and cracks, they put it back together [00:37:00] with gold. It becomes more valuable than it ever was. And so my cracks are filled with gold now. I’ve got the most amazing friends, don’t have a lot of ’em because I don’t want ’em, um, but the ones that I have, there is nothing they wouldn’t do for me. Um, so I have my gold, my cracks are full of gold.
[00:37:30] Ed Watters: That’s awesome. You know, and, and that is a, a treasure in your life when you understand that simple thing. Tywanah,
[00:37:42] Tywanah Evette: And my babies are healing.
[00:37:44] Ed Watters: Yes. How can people find you, reach out to you, and get involved with you?
[00:37:53] Tywanah Evette: Black butterfly goddess on every social media platform as well as my website. Um, [00:38:00] and then the summit is heal her, all one word, .biz.
[00:38:05] Ed Watters: You’re a very powerful force and I appreciate what you’re doing. Thank you for sharing it here today with us on the Dead America Podcast.
[00:38:16] Tywanah Evette: Thank you.
[00:38:20] Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.