Leticia Ochoa Adams on how Faith and Therapy can work together in Healing

Leticia Ochoa Adams is a wife, mother, grandmother and loves her family’s three pit bulls. She is a born-and-raised Texan. She is Hispanic, Catholic, Whole Life, anti-racist and is dedicated to helping people make space in their lives for their own grief or for the grief of those they love. She speaks and writes on parenting, her Catholic faith, learning how to process childhood trauma and suicide loss.

Connect with Leticia or hire her https://leticiaoadams.com/ Email her at leticiaoadams@gmail.com Follow her on Instagram Or on facebook

This episode was recorded the day after the presidential inauguration and Danielle checks in with Leticia about how she is feeling regarding the transition of power.

Leticia said she feels like we’re in the aftermath of a tornado. Having grown up in Texas she is familiar with the terror of tornados—you get a warning the storm is coming and then you don’t know if it will actually hit. Then when it does hit it leaves a path of destruction. While there is relief when the tornado is over, there is so much work to do in the wake of its destruction. That is how she feels about the presidential inauguration. She is happy and feels a sense of relief at the departure of President Trump and yet she knows that the issues are still present but at least “you don’t have the most powerful person in the country instigating those issues further.”

Danielle says it was a four year long tornado.

Leticia said for her people especially, Hispanics, there is a lot of destruction left behind in their community in the wake of Trump’s presidency. She has hope because, “I know us and I know that at the end of the day we’re going to figure out a way to keep it going.”

Maggie said Leticia’s image of the tornado feels so true and it acknowledges the complexity of this moment- the sense of relief the storm is over (Trump is gone) AND the work ahead in the wake of the destruction (disrupting systems). Maggie asks Leticia, what does it look like to tend to ourselves right now?

Holding two conflicting feelings at the same time is a familiar feeling to Leticia growing up as a Hispanic girl in Texas. Add to her own childhood trauma, three years ago on March 8th, her oldest son Anthony died by suicide. It tore everything in her life down — especially her Catholic faith and her belief in God. Leticia said it was the 8 years of therapy before hand that set her up to be in a place where she was able to withstand this huge loss. She believes the way forward for us as a collective right now is to take a deep breathe and begin doing internal work, internal healing.

“What Trump did put a giant spotlight on all these unhealed places in our communities.” Leticia said maybe we have been lulled into comfort by Amazon prime, Netflix and Uber eats… so that we no longer remembered these wounds. But now, Leticia says, is the call to remember and have a collective “come to Jesus moment.”

Danielle feels caught: Even though we have had this transfer of power, these unhealed spaces in our communities are still open wounds. She used the analogy of the change in shift of doctors at the ER; The tired, burned out doctor who was actually causing harm is replaced by a more capable and resourced doctor, but all the patients still have open wounds. She describes is like taking a band aid off and finding the wound has gangrene. “I was so used the smell but now I have to look at it.”

As a therapist Danielle fully believes what Leticia claim that “stories will lead us.” She asks Leticia to talk about faith and therapy working together.

Leticia believes the path to heaven is a path of healing. She says Jesus didn’t come so that He could give us a little book of rules of dos and don’ts; He came because God created us to love us and part of loving someone is helping them be their best selves. We collect so many tiny paper cuts of hurts throughout our lives that bring us to a space of wounded-ness. God wants to reach into those places and heal us.

Leticia says she tells people in the Catholic faith, “You can’t just pray a rosary and then suddenly everything will be fine… God is not a magician, He is the creator of the universe.” And so there is space for us even with our faith to go to therapy and look at each of those paper cuts.

The thing Leticia loves most about her therapist is that she takes out a giant white board and will color code her wounds. They will dig through her story in order to see how everything is connected and how things continue to play out in areas of her life (her past showing up in her present). Instead of being triggered and freaking out, she can actually be present in the moment and is able to figure out that place of wounding and understanding where they come from.

Because of therapy Leticia has been able to accept the things she did wrong as a mother without taking the blame for her son’s suicide. She said this is what white people need to do— acknowledge the things they did wrong without taking the responsibility of being a KKK member. Leticia says we know that white supremacy presents itself differently in this day and age but this is the way forward. The healing requires space to know what your wounds are and to take responsibility for the things you are responsible for without taking the blame for things you aren’t necessarily responsible for. In her case she says “I am responsible for the ways I failed to be a great mother, coming from a place of being human, but not taking responsibility for my son’s suicide.”

There is a tension faith and therapy and Leticia thinks it comes from an idea that suffering in our life is somehow an indication that you’re not grateful to God. There is conflicting message