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She Tapped Her Way from Darkness to Freedom!

Holly Timberlake
Apr 12
3 min read

If you want to experience the power of what tapping can do for you, please watch this video (below, and please forgive me for all the flaws in this, I am just learning my way!) I just did with Lisa Forbes, author of: I Can Take It From Here: A memoir of trauma, prison, and self-empowerment. Her journey is one of stumbling across tapping on You Tube & deciding at a very low, yet suddenly much more aware, point in her life that she would tap through the days to help her stop recreating her past. Using tapping to free herself from these limiting and self-sabotaging patterns an emotions, she has become who she knew she could be: a dynamic and deeply inspiring speaker and advocate for tapping to help "restored humans"--those who were once incarcerated now struggling to build good and healthy lives for themselves and their families. While her non-profit: Operation I Can Take It From Here, focuses on this population, she is quick to add that she wants to help anyone who comes to her. While she did most of her healing on her own, she wants others to know that there is someone they can turn to for support, so that no one need feel alone.

We emphasized both the power that all of us have to transform our lives out of trauma, even when we think nothing can ever change for us, and how tapping is perhaps unique in it's capacity to help people self-heal because of its inherently self-empowering qualities. It is a tool that ANYONE can transform their lives with. We spoke of personal trauma (all forms), generational trauma, of community trauma, of combat trauma and of living in war torn areas of the world no matter where: Chicago projects, for example, have war torn elements just as do other parts of the world, all sharing the life shattering effects of a people at war or under attack. We spoke of trauma that comes, too, from natural disasters, and how all of that trauma shows up in ALL of our social issues.Lisa spoke of how she overcame the fears of going deep into her own healing and the emotional freedom that came from her courageous choices to keep working on what came up to transform herself into the person she wanted to be.

Realizing that her story might be triggering for some watching and listening to the video; we stopped and walked people through the Thymus Thump and the tapping points, encouraging people to rewind that portion of the recording until they felt their nervous systems and emotions calm. We started tapping on the top of the head and then I called out each of the points, through tapping the wrists together. Simple...no words...just tapping.

As you listen to her speak, you can hear how able she is to talk about deep pain as a story to inspire others, to lift them up; something, I noted, that is very difficult to do when still controlled by the pain and the patterns of the past.

I loved this interview! I am a better person for having read her book and for getting to know her, her heart and soul. If you are on a healing journey; if you want to be on one, but doubt you can bear it; if you wonder if you've done enough...you'll want to listen to this!

She now has a non-profit devoted to getting the word out to this population that they can heal and can create a different life for themselves, no matter what. Using herself as an example to show that it can be done, she courageously shares her story, which will illuminate and inspire all who listen to it.

PS: I created this podcast for a non profit I have been involved with for many years now--Finding Freedom & Empowerment from Abuse or FREA (FREA.support). We have both a Facebook page where we post on topics related to healing from abuse and a website that shows and explains many Emotional First Aid techniques and what they can help with, to help people on their healing journeys. You can find the podcast there, here and on my You Tube channel at Holly Timberlake.

Lisa Forbes: A beautiful interview