Meet Laura Sharon, Executive and Leadership Coach. In the soon-available book, The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools for Transformation, Laura shares her journey of awakening to a marriage that mirrors the dysfunction of her childhood, and how she processes shame and grief to protect her children and reclaim the life—and self—she nearly lost.
The Wellness Universe (WU): Hello Laura, please tell us about yourself and what inspired you to write your chapter in the book The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools For Transformation.
Laura Sharon (LS): Hi! I’m the owner of Imperative Dimensions, where I serve as an executive life coach and performance improvement consultant with over 30 years of experience. I’ve been actively working on healing childhood trauma for close to 40 years and consider myself a Courage Sherpa: I help people get to the heart of what matters most when on the road to change.
I’m also a mom; a health educator; a lover of art, science, animals, jigsaw puzzles, and the beach; a blogger; and the author of When I Lay My Hands on My Heart: Healing Through Words and Color, a book of poetry and drawings—for individuals, therapists, and other helping professionals who work with trauma survivors—that chronicles how I used creativity as a tool for healing childhood trauma. I have also been a contributing chapter author to three other collaborative book projects: Stopping the Silence: Thriving after Childhood Sexual Abuse, The Wellness Universe’s Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools for Happiness, and The Wellness Universe’s Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools for Stress Relief.
My lived experience and wholehearted belief that unattended shame and grief are debilitating are what inspired me to write my chapter. At best, these two emotions keep us pretending and stuck. At worst, they kill. So, to live and thrive rather than survive, we must find ways to transform our pain, sorrow, shame, and grief.
Have you ever noticed how the universe sends the same lesson until we acknowledge and own our part in a situation and do the hard emotional work to heal?
Unresolved shame and grief contribute to difficulties within ourselves and in relationships until we resolve the root cause(s) of those emotions. The story I share in this book focuses on the awakening I experienced in my first marriage, and how identifying and processing shame and grief transformed my inner life and relationship trajectory.
Every loss calls us to leverage all the strength, experience, and support we can to carry on. And, as life would have it, another loss took me to my knees at the end of 2024 when my youngest son died by suicide. Although thrown into deep agony, I have been able to draw on years of experience befriending shame and grief to walk through the depths of despair. Again. I know what is happening as it happens, name my emotions, allow them to move through me, seek refuge in writing, nature, and other supportive people and activities. And, trust that I will one day be able to see light at the end of the dark tunnel of grief.
The first step is to awaken to what is happening and allow the experience to move through us.
WU: What tool do you share in this book, and what can we expect to experience as a result of using this tool?
LS: I assert that the majority of people in our Western culture are not very skillful at identifying, naming, and processing difficult emotions like shame and grief. The tool I offer is a 12-step process to help people recognize, experience, and process shame and grief. Following the steps helps build shame and grief resilience, which we all need to become more skillful with because these are two emotions that, when not addressed, can take us to our knees and result in poor coping behaviors like numbing and denial. And, as I mentioned before, they can also lead to death.
I emphasize the steps as a process because this tool is not a “one-and-done.” The idea is to practice these steps repeatedly until they become second nature.
WU: What challenge(s) might readers encounter as they begin to use the tool?
LS: Mindset and self-judgment are likely the biggest culprits to watch out for. Not viewing the steps as a practice will likely be the biggest challenge. Like learning any new skill, internalizing the steps requires discipline, especially in the beginning. Expect the process to feel awkward until you’ve used it enough to build familiarity. Until that happens, you will likely need to refer to the tool instructions, which is okay. Once you’ve developed the skill as “muscle memory,” referring to the written words will no longer be necessary. Though you will master the steps, you will never do it perfectly, so continue to work on noticing and letting go of critical self-talk and judgment. And just do it. The life you save may be your own.
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The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care, 25 Tools for Transformation
Life is a journey of transformation—some chosen, others unexpected. In this book from The Wellness Universe, more than 25 experts share stories and self-care tools to guide your growth and transformation. Discover wisdom, healing, and inspiration to live a fulfilled, balanced life. Aligned with The Wellness Universe’s mission, it’s a guide to well-being and a better world.
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What a powerful and deeply moving interview. Laura, your courage in sharing such personal truths—and your commitment to guiding others through the tangled terrain of shame and grief—is profoundly inspiring. Your 12-step process is such a gift for those ready to heal in a wholehearted, lasting way. Thank you for being a beacon of light in the darkness.