While We Were Silent: Becoming An Agent For Change with Licia Berry

In the wake of the events that fueled the Me Too movement, a lot of questions have been coming up. Why would someone stay silent about abuse and then speak up twenty years after the event happened? What we may not know is that silence is actually the norm, not the exception. Licia Berry, known as the Guide to the Frontier Inside, experienced abuse in her childhood home. She remained silent for many years. In adulthood, as she grappled with how to confront her past, she feared losing her connection to the only family she knew. This ignited a passion in her to become an agent for change. Licia shares how she began to examine her life and realize the things she needed to heal from which then led her into actually being of service to other people.

—

The following interview is from the series called While We Were Silent. In the wake of the events that fueled the #MeToo Movement, a lot of questions have been coming up. Why would someone stay silent about abuse and then speak up twenty years after the event happened? My experience is that silence is the norm, not the exception. I wanted to explore the ‘why’ and help all of us, those who have experienced sexual trauma and abuse and those who have not, to understand why people do not speak up and what happens in them during the periods of silence. While We Were Silent is an interview series with experts in healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and each one of these experts was chosen because they themselves have experienced sexual trauma and they’ve walked the path of healing and now they’re helping others to heal.

These interviews tell their stories and they explore opportunities for healing. They also explore what is shifting in our mass consciousness as the culture and our humanity has an incredible opportunity to heal from this undercurrent that is present in our culture and that has allowed the prevalence of sexual abuse to exist for so very long. This is a conversation that is timely, it’s relevant, and it’s so important to our culture right now. I want to thank you for being here and for hanging in there with us and I do hope that you will receive value from these interviews.

Listen to the podcast here:

I’m happy to be here.

It’s wonderful to have you. Licia is an incredible woman and a beautiful friend. Licia is a 30-year veteran educator in public schools, state agencies, nonprofits, and business sector. She has an international clientele in her private practice where she shepherds refugees of patriarchy into the new world. Through achievements of the whole brain state, she teaches how to access ancestral memory, heal ancestral trauma, and free ourselves from the bondage of cultural misinformation. Utilizing creative, neurobiological and shamanic approaches, Licia is a Pioneer and Leader of the Aquarian, or partnered/power-with movement.

She is the Creator of Daughters of Earth Program for women called to midwife the world into a new era. She is the author of the number one international bestseller, I Am Her Daughter: The Healing Path to a Woman’s Power, as well as other books. She travels full-time to spread the message of equality, partnership, and Earth-balance along with her beloved husband. Welcome, Licia. Thank you again for being here. Can you start out by telling us a little bit more about your story? What led you to where you are now and the work that you do with helping others?

My story starts with anyone else’s story. Having experienced as a young person and having awareness that I didn’t like that experience and deciding that I would do something about it, as soon as I had power to do so. In this case, experiencing gender bias, experiencing sexual abuse and violence, and other abuses in my childhood home, in my biological family. Having an awareness young, I have judged archetype where I’m so sensitive to injustices and I’m always very alert to the fairness button. I’m like, “That’s not fair.”

When these things happened, that I experienced them, I was ignited very young. I was subsequently an angry teenager because I still didn’t have the power to do something about any of it. By the time I escaped and started college, I began to examine my life and realized that there were things that had happened to me that we’re not okay, that needed to be quantified, that I needed to heal from, and that led me into being of service to other people. I had to get my own act together first though.

Now that you have gotten into the realm of helping other people, what is it that you do that helps people? What do you offer?

I provide a holistic method of personal inquiry and investigation of mending and healing that blends my education background, my neurobiology background, and indigenous medicine background along the very keen and skeptical scientist mind, but also deep spiritual gene. That’s what I mean by a whole brain state. I’m accessing the left, the logical, and the right, imaginative, intuitive, empathic. Those two sides of a coin.

As a result of that, I’m able to see deeply and shepherd folks that are ready to change the culture, folks that are keen and aware and alert to how the culture isn’t serving everyone, it’s not taking care of everyone, and would like to see that be different, would like it to be fair. They would like it to be kind, affirming, and loving to everyone. I tend to work with women mostly, but I do work with a few good men who have an awareness of their feminine inside and are willing to work with their feminine side in partnership with their masculine.

We decide that we're going to choose ourselves, even if that means that we're going to lose something or someone that we may love very much. Share on X

I’m working with women who have felt emasculated by the culture to recover not only their feminine energy and to trust and love and embody that, but also to marry that with their inner masculine energy, that yang, the answer to the yin, so that they can be effective in the world and make their mark and contribute something through service or action. That’s the sweet spot for me, that sacred union internally when we’ve been decimated by something traumatic or challenging such as a sexual assault or sexual violence or abuse. There are so many things that get diminished. We were robbed of so much when we feel powerless in that way. The recovery of those parts, I find to be essential to showing up in the world in the strength and the centeredness that is not adding more chaos to the world, but mending, bringing wholeness and integration.

I always use to tell people that I was asked repeatedly over my lifetime when I went to school and then later, “You would make a fantastic psychotherapist. Why don’t you go ahead and get your clinicians license?” I’m like, “I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to play by those rules.” I have a transpersonal approach. I don’t want to diagnose someone and tell them what’s wrong with them. I want to see all the strengths that they have and bring those together and mend. I’m going to be using methods that are not okay in the psychologist office. The indigenous medicine pieces are often frowned upon in that realm and the science around it. It was required and necessary for me to get my own act together and feel like I was solid enough that I could show up and actually be a stable light. Not a flash or a wounded healer, but someone that could bring a strength to the work and be a stabilizing influence in a culture that asks us to be broken and un-stabilized.

It’s an important work that you do, and I’ve had some insight into it. With all of the pieces that you bring together are so important. The title of this project is called While We Were Silent. One of the main purposes is to shed some light on why we tend to keep things secret, to hold thing secret, to stay silent when violation has occurred, when we feel we’ve been violated or an abuse has occurred. In your experience working with others and yourself, what do you see as some keys that can shed some insight? One of the inspirations for this project is we know so many people have been coming forward after years and years and years later after having experienced an abuse and they’re speaking out against people in power. There have been a lot of things called into question about what is the ulterior motive? Why would they just now be coming out? Is it really credible?

I’m sure there may be some cases where there is a conspiracy and somebody is paid off to speak about something about somebody and take somebody down. That’s the question that comes into play. I heard two men who are influencers in the personal development world who influence hundreds of thousands of people. I heard them make a joke about this in particular. One of them went to slap the other one on the butt and the other one says, “I’ll call that sexual harassment, but don’t worry, I won’t say anything until twenty years later and then I’ll come back and get you.” I thought, “We have so much work to do.”

We need to shed some light on what happens in these situations. What has been happening? There is the individual and then there is the cultural, the collective. There is a shift that’s happening in the masses now. I want to help people to understand so that we can have a greater understanding of each other of what’s moving and come together with more compassionate and mutual respect rather than this thing. It’s part of human nature. It comes up. That questions that poses doubt, that wants to discredit others when we don’t want to believe that things could really be so horrible, and that so many people can be so horrible. There’s a lot that goes on there and at the same time with the numbers, the volume of people coming forward, it’s perpetuating a shift in the mass consciousness and in the culture. That’s a big question. Can you start with on the individual level though? On the individual level, why the silence and what’s happening there?

There are lots of layers. The fear of what the response will be, “No one’s going to believe me,” or, “I’m going to get in trouble,” or there’s some loss, “If I do this, then something that I need or want is going to go away.” I found for me that one thing that kept me quiet was I didn’t believe myself. I doubted myself. I didn’t want to believe that my father and uncle and grandfather had done these things or that my mother has served me up. I didn’t want to trust my memories. I didn’t want to believe they would do that to me.

Then that next layer is, “If I say this out loud, then I may lose them,” which is what happened. When I challenged the system, when I spoke up and said, “All these things I’m remembering and putting it together, what was this?” Instantly, the response was, “You’re crazy. You’re a liar. You are making all this up. Why are you doing this to our family?” It became this decision point internally. This is where it comes for everyone. This is a piece of the work that I do that is so key and so essential, is that we decide that we are going to choose ourselves, even if that means that we’re going to lose something or someone that we may love very much. If they are demanding our silence or causing us to doubt our own mind, our memory, our own body, our own feeling, then we have to find someone that does believe us or at least hold the space for us to investigate it, to decide if it’s real and really true, but that those people who are actively seeking our silence needs to be removed from our lives.

I’ve found that to be true for me because I fought so hard for my mending. I bought in to this idea that there was definitely something wrong with me, that I was the crazy one and I was making it all up and I was therefore very bad. What a horrible daughter I was to create this situation in my family. I didn’t create this situation. I was just reporting the situation. The situation was created by the people who were the perpetrators. It took me a long time to overcome that personal stigma, and carrying that because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to talk about it unless I was sure. If I didn’t believe myself, then I sure didn’t want to put it out there in the world because maybe it wasn’t true.

That kept me quiet for a really long time. As I look at others and look at the culture, the bigger examination, which is where I Am Her Daughter, the book, it examines the larger reasons why this kind of information is suppressed and rejected and discouraged the way that it has been. I’ve been talking about this for 30 years. I never thought in my lifetime that I would see the level of openness that’s happening around the #MeTooMovement. I can’t even believe it. It’s stunning. It’s high time. It’s incredible.

SCS 02 | Agent For Change — I Am Her Daughter: The Healing Path to a Woman’s Power (Woman, Awake) (Volume 2)

We’re in a culture that tends to do the pendulum swing. When something bright and beautiful happens, a truth and opening occurs, then there’s the backlash because of the polarity, because there’s not union among the parts. There is this swing back and forth. There’s a backlash already occurring and that will potentially get stronger. The courage to step forth and speak when a culture really has a vested interest in our being powerless and being silent and not challenging the status quo, requires incredible strength internally, but also defined tribe as we talked about.

This is why the Daughters of Earth Project, for women to join together who are committed to fairness and equality for all of us on the planet, living with principles that are balanced in accordance with Earth’s direction. How do we live in a way that everyone gets to be alive and everyone gets to be accepted and affirmed and safe, respected? We all belong here. This is all of our garden. We’re all children of this planet and we really are talking about culture change and nothing else will do. The culture is broken.

That is one of the passions that I have in bringing this project out is that this is a time where that surface of that wound has been scratched and rather than just let it scar over and stay in place, let’s bring the issues to the surface. Let’s have the conversations about it. Let’s bring us to some mutual understanding, some mutual respect, some healing. Let’s seize this opportunity so that rather than go into the backlash, the next thing hits the media and our focus is off somewhere else and no healing happens. I want to seize this opportunity even. If the next thing does happen, let’s still seize this opportunity. Let’s have the conversations, let’s bring it forward.

Licia, can you say a little bit about when we are holding things secret and silent, during that time, what are the consequences internally and what’s the ripple effect that shows up in a person’s life? This is to help individuals to understand in their own lives what may be impacted by what they hold inside as well as to help other people understand as they are witnessing what’s going on in the world.

It’s such an important question. It’s a profound question because it comes back down to that choice, choosing our self over the safety or convenience of other people who would rather not hear our story. The consequence that I experienced first was my mind. The self-doubt, the racing thoughts, zooming around in my head constantly as if I was running away from something that was right in the core that’s always running around the perimeter, the mind instead of dropping right in there. The self-doubt eating the way, the erosion of, “Can I be trusted? Can I trust my own mind?”The holding of the secret emotionally is making me unavailable to other people. It made me definitely less available to myself. I couldn’t be feeling, I couldn’t be a living, breathing human flesh and blood person if I was this brick wall holding everything inside. The releasing of the information over the years and the healing of the wound on the inside made me porous again.

It made me a living, breathing member of the human being club, but holding it back emotionally. Never knowing why if I felt a certain way, if it was because of something I was experiencing internally or if it was something that was on the outside. Trauma in general, if it’s held in the body, it affects us deeply physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It’s separating ourselves from ourselves. That gap, that division, only bad things grow in that space. We become vulnerable to other people’s ability or manipulation to keep us quiet or to even hurt us more.

That coming together, the speaking of the voice, the meeting of the spirit with the body through the voice and the emotion and the mind bring things together so that there’s not vulnerability. There’s so much joy on the other side. Once that freedom has occurred and we realized that there’s a reason that we need to speak, there’s a reason we need to gain our heart again and show up and claim our center and claim our body and our mind and our emotions and our spirit and bring them into power together, there’s such an incredible sense of purpose and passion for being alive on this planet.

Suddenly, all those doubts become certainty and life becomes a real gift instead of this thing you have to slog your way through. There’re so many consequences of not telling. I’m thinking about not having a voice physically. I’m still to a degree am introverted, but I’ve learned to be extroverted as a speaker and a teacher. Yet when I was silent, I was physically silent too. I didn’t speak, I didn’t talk, and if I did, my voice was so soft and so tiny that nobody could hear me. I may not as well have been speaking at all. My husband, when we first met 32 years ago, I was quiet as a mouse and he was a big talker.

He said to me, “I’d love to know what you’re thinking, but you never say anything.”He made the space to invite me out and that was a consequence. He didn’t know how I felt. He didn’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t communicating and he wanted that. He missed it. The relationship wasn’t okay because he wanted me to be part of it. It took some time for me to trust to even had a voice. Even in the physical way, it’s just that overcoming. It affects us physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually to be silent. There’s a reason we have a voice. We need to use it.

You’ve given a number of examples there of what waits on the other side when we step on that healing path and breakthrough that silence and take up our space in our bodies and reclaim our voices. You mentioned that commitment to sell and you mentioned integration of yourself. You mentioned reclaiming your strength and your power. You mentioned showing up in relationships and having healthier relationships. You mentioned stepping into the fullness of who you’re meant to be in the world which is what we see you in right now, which is absolutely beautiful and incredible. Anything you want to add to that?

Sometimes when people, women particularly, hear something like this, there are several steps between believing yourself, stepping into your own voice, speaking out loud, beginning the healing, and then several steps down the road showing up as a healer or in service or a leader so that it can be done well, so that there’s an integrity level and a structurally sound person inside. Some women will hear this conversation and feel like as soon as they open their mouth, they’re going to be pressured to show up and be of service in the world. I want to caution against that assumption because we all begin where we begin and it takes as long as it takes.

There is no pressure at all to show up for other people, unless and until if that’s something that calls later that we must choose self. That’s primary our own healing, our own wholeness, our own sense of belonging in this world must come first and not coincidentally, it is the most powerful thing that we can do towards our goal of the world being more equitable and respectful for all people. It always begins here. I urge everyone to come into that kind, sane, love of you first, tend to this first, and let the saving the world stuff happen later when it’s correct timing. If there are questions about that, if there are concerns about that by all means, reach out to me. I’m happy to talk with you about it. That’s what I would add.

I know that can be daunting a lot of times when you think that, “In one step I’m going to reclaim my voice and save the world.” That’s a heck of a lot of pressure on anyone. Regardless of what each one of us does with our reclaiming of ourselves and committing to ourselves and reclaiming of our voices and just saying yes to take up the space that were born into, regardless of what you do beyond that point, it’s all a part, an integral and very important part of making this world a more equitable place. A safer place for all women, girls, men, boys, for everyone. I agree with the importance of it. As so many people are coming forward in mass and we’re seeing these changes that are happening now, what do you see, especially as a Shepherd of the Aquarian age, happening in the evolution of our culture?

In order to heal, there has to be a safe space. Share on X

What I’ve noticed over the last 30 years or so that I’ve been paying attention to what’s happening beyond my own survival, is that I feel and sense that as we become more connected certainly through technology, we are becoming more aware of the ways that the culture has failed us. Society, being more left brain-dominant and not as valuing of those right brain impulses to connect and to have empathy and emotional intelligence, to understand that we’re all related, that has really led to a place of an epidemic of depression and addiction and such sad tragedies that are power stealing. What I’ve noticed is that we’re swinging in that connection and awareness. We are becoming more alert to what power actually is, not force, but what true personal power is and how valuable that is for each person to feel, to have choices in their life and have freedom.

There is the swinging occurring. If it’s masculine, “We hate men and therefore it has to be all women so that women are only empowered.”Instead of doing that whole binary thing again, I feel like there’s a potential that we could actually come together and that there can be left brain and right brain working together. There can be men and women working together, there can be masculine and feminine working together and that’s the Aquarian model is with that partnership. Instead of one or the other has to be in charge or be the best or be dominant, it’s like, “Let’s do this together because together we’re stronger and together we can actually have a greater chance of creating the world we all want.”

My feeling is that that’s where we’re heading. I do think it’s messy because growth is messy in general. Getting challenged on our belief systems is messy. It’s uncomfortable. We don’t always like that, but we don’t grow without that discomfort. I believe that’s what we’re going through right now and I feel that women in particular, because of the way our bodies are and the way our brains are, are conduits of Earth’s intelligence, the consciousness of this planet that we all sprang from.

We are therefore called into leadership when we’re ready by speaking, saying, “It would be good for us to do this particular project so that everybody gets a part of it,” or “I think we should create a community garden so we can feed the people in the neighborhood that aren’t getting enough food.””Let’s march on the capital for gun control because it’s not okay for kids to get mowed down in school.” There are these impulses about life being precious and worth preserving. These voices of Earth come through us as women to say, “There is a way. We all do know the way. We just need to remember. It’s old knowledge, old wisdom.” I see women coming into greater power in terms of affecting change in the world. This is a good thing.

If you could say one more thing to someone, thinking of one individual out there, who is still struggling and perhaps suffering in silence, what would you say to her or to him to offer hope?

The first thing I would say is go find someone you can talk to, that is not going to ridicule you or reject you or convince you that you are wrong. In order to heal, there has to be a safe space. There has to be room and permission for you to explore without any judgment. It’s essential for that because it may be true that some of what you remember or what you feel happened may not have happened in exactly the way you remember, but that doesn’t matter because the fact is this impulse is there and it has to be addressed, it has to be aired, it has to be spoken. In an environment of safety, you can actually sift through what you remember, sift through the details, sift through the ways that you were hurt, and actually put it together in a way that makes sense to you in your own mind so that you can tell this story.

It comes back to that thing of self-doubt. Having someone that you can talk to is absolutely essential, that will not judge you so that you can sift through it and examine it, turning it upside down and be like, “How do I put this together? How do I talk about this?” I was fortunate to find a good therapist in my twenties. I was 23 when I started my healing process and that made all the difference. It changed everything for me to just have a safe place. If you can’t afford to go to a therapist, which I couldn’t at the time, she gave me a cut rate because I was a struggling student at the time.

There are options. There’s free counseling available, there are hotlines available. There are scholarships and grants available for people to go to get counseling. The worst case scenario, co-counseling. Go to a friend and just say, “I got something really hard that I need to explore, something really challenging I need to talk about and I don’t even know if I can. Here’s what I need from you. I need you to hold absolute space for me by not interrupting me, not judging me, just listening to what I have to say. Then give me a hug at the end and be like, I’m here for you.” Complete acceptance, nonjudgmental space. That is absolutely required to start our healing.

I love how you put that, setting that context upfront and really asking for what you need. That is so important. It makes all the difference in the world. A lot of times, people when we want to speak about these things, they don’t know what to say. They don’t know how to act or react to what they’re hearing. Letting them know upfront, just letting people know that it’s okay not coming to you, expecting you to know what to say or what to do or anything like that, just asking you to hold the space and allow me the space to speak and to not be fixed, to not be judged, to not be questioned or doubted but to just get it all out and hugged. That’s a huge thing. Thank you for sharing that. Licia, if people want to find out more information about you, about your books, your programs, all of the things that you offer, how would they do that?

I can be found at a couple of websites. LiciaBerry.com, that’s the flagship. That’s been here for a long, long time on the internet. The most recent project is DaughtersOfEarth.com, and that is where we are building the movement through community, through connection, and through inspiration. As you’re highlighting ordinary women doing extraordinary things through their service in the world, we’re going to be making a documentary and we would love everyone to be part of this. It’s an amazing project. It’s about pooling women together who are heeding Earth’s impulse for healing and wholeness and love and acceptance for all people. I’d love to have everyone check us out.

Thank you, Licia.

Please check out Licia’s resources. She’s an amazing woman, an amazing healer, and an amazing example of what can happen when you take that step and begin on that healing journey. Remember that no matter where you are, that we’ve all started from behind that wall of silence. At some point in some way, we’ve been in a struggle behind that wall of silence at some time. Do reach out. I do hope that you’ll spread these and share these interviews far and wide. These are available for free for everyone that maybe questioning, may be struggling either with themselves or with wondering where the heck all these people were coming from. Please share this information far and wide, and if you’d like to continue the conversation, please join us in the Facebook group called While We Were Silent. Thank you very much for joining us.

About Licia Berry

Licia is a 30-year veteran educator — in public schools, state agencies, non-profits and business sector — and she has international clientele in her private practice, where she shepherds refugees of patriarchy into the new world. Through achievement of the whole brain state, she teaches how to access ancestral memory, heal ancestral trauma, and free ourselves from the bondage of cultural misinformation. Utilizing creative, neurobiological and shamanic approaches, Licia is a pioneer and leader of the Aquarian (or, partnered/power-with) movement.

She is the creator of Daughters of Earth™ Program for women called to midwife the world into a new era, and the author of the #1 international bestseller, I AM Her Daughter – the Healing Path to a Woman’s Power as well as other books, and travels full time to spread the message of equality, partnership, and Earth balance along with her beloved. She can be reached on social media and on her websites www.LiciaBerry.com www.DaughtersOfEarth.com and www.JuicySacredLiving.com

Licia is the best-selling author of Love Letter – A Message of Comfort, Self Care and Sanity in Stimulating Times (2008), SOUL COMPOST-Making Good Medicine out of Bad Medicine (2012), The Frontier Inside – a Woman’s Path to Personal Power (2014), and latest #1 international bestseller I Am Her Daughter – the Healing Path to a Woman’s Power in 2016. She also writes on her blog at LiciaBerry.com.