Podcast: EP 73 Freedom Through Forgiveness with Brialle Ringer

Podcast

follow @koyawebb

Wellness visionary & inspirational speaker, author of Let Your Fears Make You Fierce, & Founder of The Get Loved Up Community. My core mission is to promote daily self-care, oneness & eco-friendly living.

Hi, I'm Koya

Are you still struggling with the trauma of the past that makes it hard for you to forgive yourself or others?

It can be difficult to forgive, especially when you’re the one that is hurt the most. But if you’re stuck in a state of unforgiving, you will not move on and only keep yourself from living the life you want.

Love, whatever trauma you’ve experienced in your life has already caused so much pain, and it doesn’t have to let you suffer more. There’s always a path to freedom from trauma, and it starts with forgiveness.

My special guest today is Brialle Ringer, and she is an advocate for the power of forgiveness. As a health coach, she focuses on a holistic approach where she incorporates her Social Work degree with the Black Feminist framework and social justice to treat wellness and health.

In this episode, Brialle talks about her journey to self-love, healing from trauma, and finding freedom through forgiveness. So, if you’re interested in holistic self-care and living a life of freedom, you will love this episode.

Who Is Brialle Ringer?

Brialle Ringer is an advocate for Black women’s wellness and healing. As an activist-scholar in college, she was recognized by the National Association of Social Workers as the Michigan NASW Diversity Scholar, where she was given the Eastern Michigan University Evan Strand Diversity Award. She partnered with Living Room Conversations to support their Talking About Race initiatives as part of her advocacy for social justice through meaningful dialogue.

Her views of personal transformation were fundamental to her collective liberation, where she promotes healing because she believes that when we heal ourselves, we also heal the world.

Brialle Ringer founded the company, Be Well with Brialle, a platform that provides guidance towards a journey of holistic healing and self-discovery using chakra education, open discussion, yoga, and plant-based nutrition. Through Be Well with Brialle, she hopes to make wellness easily accessible and culturally relevant, where she continues to offer scholarships for the liberation of Black women through The Black Women’s Healing Fund.

Brialle graduated Summa Cumme Laude and Highest Honors from the Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work. She received her certification in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University and completed my 200-hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training class. Now, Brialle Ringer is empowering Black women to a healthy vegan lifestyle and self-healing from their trauma.

Coping and Healing with Trauma

Trauma can happen to anyone at any time, and it is a normal experience following an unexpected yet disturbing event, whether it be a car crash, a terrorist attack, social or racial discrimination, a natural disaster, or sexual abuse. A traumatic event can have an emotional toll, leading to stress, anxiety, or depression. But there are choices for regaining control of your life.

Unfortunately, those who have a traumatic experience are normally stuck in a sphere of self-pity or denial, unable to move on. Brialle Ringer also experienced a traumatic incident during her college days.

“I experienced sexual trauma when I was 17. And I think for a really long time, I just kind of denied that and repressed that. And … that was an experience that happened to me when I was in college.” – Brialle Ringer

Brialle responded to her experience of sexual trauma with denial and repression, unable to face the truth. In an effort to normalize the experience, she spent the subsequent two years partying and having casual sexual encounters as a form of self-sabotage, hoping to mask her suffering. Later on, a visit to a doctor due to persistent pain in the womb led to a surgical operation to remove a cyst in her right ovary. She believed that the cyst was a physical manifestation of her unresolved sexual trauma. But one event led to a life-changing moment for Brialle Ringer.

“I was at this Survivor Speak Out [event], listening to other peoples’ stories, and [I] really heard a lot of myself in their stories. … [And I] started to acknowledge that this is something that has happened [to me] — I’m a survivor of sexual assault. And even then when I began to name it, I was still not ready to talk about it and really heal from it.” – Brialle Ringer

Acceptance is a significant milestone in coping with trauma, but it should be followed with healing. Brialle was not yet ready to heal at first. But when she started to experience the physical manifestations in her body through recurring reproductive health problems, that’s when she committed to self-healing.

“What really brought me into committing to healing myself holistically was my body. My body was calling me to heal. I started to experience physical manifestations of this unresolved emotional and sexual trauma, and how that was showing up for me was recurring reproductive health challenges.” – Brialle Ringer

There are many ways of coping with trauma, but regardless of which path you choose, it must first begin with forgiveness. By taking responsibility for your actions that led to the traumatic event and forgiving yourself for your mistakes, only then can you move on to the next stage towards freedom from trauma.

Freedom Through Forgiveness

Forgiveness usually doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to heal, and it also takes time to forgive. The hurt feelings and pain in the form of anger, resentment, shame, and guilt, are sometimes directed towards others — other times toward one’s self. However, you can take the holistic approach to the process of forgiveness by changing your lifestyle and accepting the responsibilities for your actions until you reach the stages of compassion, forgiveness, and self-healing.

“You can heal your life. But you have to address your emotions. If you don’t take care of them, or you don’t pay attention to them, or if you don’t express them, they will go into your body somewhere, and they will chill there until you address them and nurture them.” – Brialle Ringer

As you begin the journey towards forgiveness, there are stages that you need to go through, and it usually starts with recognition, followed by responsibility, expression, and ultimately recreating.

“What really freed me was forgiveness, and [I] actually called the person with whom the situation happened … addressing the conflict at the source and calling the person with the support of a coach and a program was critical to my healing. – Brialle Ringer

The stages of recognition and responsibility are the easier steps because these are self-discovery actions. By recognizing the incident and taking responsibility for your actions, you are setting the stage for the next step, which is expression. This is the more challenging part because it may entail a dialogue with the involved party. For Brialle, she took the time and effort to connect with the person who caused her harm because she understands the importance of this stage in the process of forgiveness that will give her freedom from the trauma.

“He didn’t even know he caused harm because I never gave him the opportunity to be accountable because I never shared. … It was like a five or 10-minute conversation that I just felt so much lighter and so much freer after — truly forgiving and at peace.” – Brialle Ringer

The last phase of forgiveness is recreating, which is a process of renewal of self-image that integrates the past to the future directions. From a sexual assault survivor to a holistic health coach, Brialle Ringer gracefully moved on from a traumatic event. Today, she is making an impact by helping others cope with their own trauma in life.

Get Loved Up with Brialle Ringer

This is such a powerful conversation with Brialle Ringer about healing and self-discovery. I’m sure those who are suffering from past traumatic events can learn some valuable lessons here. If you have friends who are grappling with forgiving someone, or themselves, for past mistakes, give them love by sharing the full episode. You could make a difference to someone today by showing them the freedom they seek through forgiveness.

Check out Brialle’s website, Be Well with Brialle, if you want to join her small group sessions on self-discovery or book for a private personalized yoga session with her. Brialle is offering Gettin’ Free: The Journey Within, a free 7-week online course about holistic healing and self-discovery using chakras. You can also follow her on Facebook and LinkedIn for more wisdom, or you may subscribe to her YouTube channel for access to free resources on vegan recipes and yoga meditations.

If you felt the love and motivation from Brialle Ringer, tag her, @brialleringer, and me, @koyawebb, on Instagram with a screenshot of this episode and your greatest takeaways. We’d be glad to know the lessons you learned from this conversation. And if you’re interested in the Yoga Teacher Training that Brialle graduated from, you can check that out here!

Before I wrap up this episode, I have one last question for Brialle Ringer. Since our goal at Get Loved Up is to educate people in the areas of spirituality, well-being, and entrepreneurship, and Brialle can beautifully see her journey of connecting with herself to get well and then bridging that wellness for others, I asked her, “What does that journey mean to you and what does that journey mean for the people that you’re working with?”

“It has been a challenging journey. … Healing what was incomplete in my life, healing those limiting beliefs, healing relationships with my parents. Those have been some really huge crucial moments. … To be able to be financially free, feels so good because I know what it’s like to have a negative bank account balance and now to have this security and stability, all while doing what I love and supporting others, … like remembering their power to heal, remembering who they truly are, [and] coming home to their bodies — it’s incredible. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of long nights and days, like putting in the work in the back end, but it’s so worth it.” – Brialle Ringer

The power of healing through forgiveness really does wonders, allowing yourself to make better decisions in life, to be free, and to be open for love. So love yourself, love others, and love the planet — one day at a time, one breath at a time.

Until next time, love.

Koya Web Signature