The Second Secret to Healing Trauma Deeply

Fog over the Smoky Mountains in Late Autumn - The Secret to Healing Trauma Deeply

Just prior to leaving for our recent time in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, I began completing the refinements of my flagship Heroine’s Journey signature program, SOULShift: The Healing that Changes Everything, in preparing to share it on a much wider scale. SOULShift is the entry point for my signature Heroine’s Journey Programs™. The ultimate outcome of SOULShift is to guide ambitious, high-achieving women through the journey of finding and healing the most urgent hidden trauma in the Patriarchy Core Wound™ – the lynch pin trauma that keeps all the other things in place - that is holding them back from the freedom and greater personal fulfillment to be all of themSelves that they hunger for, or from co-creating Soul-satisfying love in their marriages, or from fulfilling the highest Soul-level work they are called to fulfill in this lifetime. 

Central to the journey of SOULShift is not only the healing but also the creating. Just as we do not plant a new crop in a field that has not been properly prepared for it, so we must find, heal, and release the old usually hidden, trauma, fears, beliefs, and unconscious programming that we have inherited from our families, our cultures and communities, past lives, and previous generations from living under a system of patriarchy for thousands of years, before we can create the new foundation for what we want instead. These are the steps of clearing and preparing the field, and then planting.

Next, we nurture the seed. Learning to embody our Sovereign Feminine Souls is part of nurturing and growing the seeds, as we co-create our Desires in this physical world. Co-creating the deeply fulfilling, joyful and free-to-be-you life, or soul-satisfyingly juicy love in your marriage, or highest level work in the world that you are called to fulfill and Desire - that you hunger for - requires that you step into and learn to embody the corresponding higher version of you, that you step into and embody your Divine Nature – your Sovereign Feminine Soul.

You feel your Desires so deeply, so potently and so urgently because it is your Soul calling you forward on your Soul purpose, forward in fulfilling your Destiny.  And you are here in this lifetime, with the deep hunger and Desires you feel, because you are called to reclaim your Feminine Spiritual Power™, so you can fulfill your Soul-level calling ~ your unique part in restoring the original blueprint of balance and partnership between masculine and feminine on the Earth.  This is the healing of the land and people worldwide, that the whole Earth is in the throes of birthing. And it is your highest soul-level work, your Great Work, or as Mystery Schools term it, your Magnum Opus, that you are called to fulfill in your own one-of-a-kind way.

It is part of my Soul-level work to assist you in preparing yourself.

The Gift of Shadow Season

Forest Path in Shadow - The Second Secret to Healing Trauma Deeply

We are now in a window of opportunity that opens and smooths the way for preparing to move forward with fulfilling your deepest Desires and Soul-level calling. We have recently gone through the gateway of Samhain, the completion of the year and beginning of the new one in the Celtic Wheel of the Year. Samhain occurs about 1 week after the Sun transits Scorpio. The Sun will be in Scorpio until the third week of November this year. Scorpio ushers in Shadow Season, the season in the Wheel of the Year that lasts until the first stirrings of Spring in early February. Shadow Season is the season when the heavens open for the deep healing work of transformation and renewal, metamorphosis, and rebirth. Vanessa Corazon, Psychic Business Coach, states:

“Scorpio holds the veil between worlds, between life and death, dark and light, between wound and healing. It is an invitation to go more deeply into our water and intuitive side… If you have been craving a realness, to be more in tune, and connected with yourself and the spirit world this is the perfect transit to dive in…”2

The New Moon in Scorpio was on November 4 this year. New Moons are the beginning of the lunation cycle and the time for cleansing and releasing, for planting seeds and new beginnings. Samhain prepares the way for the Scorpio New Moon. This New Moon is particularly potent for beginning the deep work of Shadow Season. Again from Vanessa,


“The New Moon in Scorpio is ushering in a time for us to exorcise toxic situations and destructive habits from our life. We (may) know deep down who and what is causing us stress, grief, (or) unbearable pain. We know that freedom and peace are on the other side of the change we need to make … Until we can completely let go, we (may feel like we’re) just dragging around a corpse.”1

This season we have extra help. The heavens are setting the table and providing

“An excellent position to cut attachments and cords that have been slowly bleeding us dry for possibly months or even years, (or even lifetimes). The relief that comes with flushing out trauma and toxicity and becoming unshackled is just on the other side of that one decision. To go through the stages of grief and release until all that’s left is the positive reflection of how that experience contributed to our growth. Not to invalidate what happened, but to make peace (and freedom) a priority.”

“This Scorpio New Moon is a portal of awakening for our intuition, our sexuality, and honing our own personal energy. Being willing to sit with and immerse ourselves in our dark side, to clean out our closets of shame, blame, embarrassment, and trauma, and being willing to forge our new selves from the ashes is what this moon is all about.

“Being willing to see and accept all aspects of yourself allows you to become the master of your own universe. Scorpio holds the keys to all of the kingdom, it’s just under some uncomfortable and somewhat dark matter. If you embrace this period as the cleansing healing window that it is, you will come out the end stronger, and more powerful than you have ever been … be willing to surrender unto yourself, and into the process fully, even if you don’t know what’s on the other side.”2 

The Time-honored Secret to Making the Most Progress with the Greatest Ease

Smoky Mountain Parkway with Snow in Late Autumn - The Secret to Healing Trauma Deeply

Whether or not you give credence to the energetic influences of the heavenly bodies, I invite you to tune in and listen to your own body and the cycles of Nature and the Earth herself. As I wrote about in the companion post, Walking with the Goddess of the Land, we have entered a season of gathering in the harvest.


“A season of harvest and celebration as we bring in the “crops” of the past growing season and gather with our families and community to offer thanks. It’s also a season of closer connection – traditionally called a “thinning of the veil” – with the spiritual dimension and those loved ones and guides and Divine Beings on the other side. Cultures in the ancient and current Celtic world throughout Europe and North America have honored this season as sacred for all of these reasons, for eons. And they have learned to connect and call in and draw down the gifts and power of this season, moving forward on the Wheel.”3

 The Second Secret?

Tuning in and getting in sync with the Seasons of nature and of your own body.

Tune in to your own body. After Summer’s season of High Growth, and Autumn’s gathering of the harvest that we are nearing completion for, do you feel the need in your body for a time of cleansing and release? Have you pushed yourself, your marriage, or your work in the world through High Growth season, and not reached the goals you had for yourself? Do you crave a season of rest and renewal? Do you feel an aridity of Soul that you perhaps have never felt before? In quiet moments, do you sense there are invisible traumas holding you back that you have not been able to get beyond – no matter how hard you have worked?

Shadow Season and the thinning of the veil of this season, is the gift the heavens give us at the beginning of a new year on the Wheel of the Year, for a season of rest, of cleansing and renewal. It’s the season given especially for the deep cleansing, healing, and renewal that we all need to move forward on our Soul’s journeys, with our Beloveds, and with our Soul’s work in the world ~ not simply going around the same loop of the status quo of our lives.

This Shadow Season is a particularly rich gift and opportunity for doing so.

And it is divine timing that my signature Heroine’s Journey program, SOULShift:  The Healing the Changes Everything, is ready to be shared more widely. SOULShift is powerfully designed to be the vehicle for this level of healing and transformation. I’ve experienced this kind of healing, transformation, metamorphosis, and renewal myself. In SOULShift I will guide you through the dark of Shadow Season, through the deep healing needed to find, heal and release the most urgent invisible trauma holding you back from deeply transforming your life, or from creating the Soul-satisfying love in your marriage you hunger for, or the invisible barrier holding you back from fulfilling the Soul-level work you are called to do.  And then I’ll guide you into freedom and a deeper connection with the light that comes from within you, into discovering and embracing your own Sovereign Feminine Soul™, and into your Heroine’s Journey to the deepened love, joy, fulfillment, meaning and Soul-level contribution that will heal the unrest and aridity of Soul you have felt, and into joy beyond imagining that will make your heart sing.

If this resonates with your heart and Soul, I warmly invite you to visit the SOULShift page to learn more. I would be delighted to guide you in receiving the gift of Shadow Season, that has opened for you, for just this time on your Soul’s journey.


  1. Corazon, Vanessa. (2020) The 2021 Moonsight Digital Calendar.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Brown Gordy, Debra (Nov. 4, 2021) “Walking with the Goddess of the Land”, in Living Water For Your Woman’s Soul.


Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET is a women’s trauma healing therapist and pioneer in healing the Patriarchy Core Wound™, whose work sits at the interface of depth healing, women’s spirituality, and timeless Western wisdom traditions. 

From her professional beginning as a marriage and family therapist over 3 decades ago to the present, Debra has found that a woman’s Heroine’s Journey to her True Self to be the path of greatest joy, fulfillment, soul-satisfying love, meaning and highest-level contribution. She is passionate about guiding ambitious, high-achieving women through their Heroine’s Journeys of the inner healing of trauma and the Patriarchy Core Wound, that blocks them from the fulfillment they hunger for, to transformation and reclaiming their Sovereign Feminine Souls. Women become free to create the deeply joyful, rich, and meaningful lives and marriages they Desire, while making the highest, Soul-level contributions they are uniquely meant to give the world.   

Debra is the founder of The Sophia Women’s Institute and works with clients worldwide. To learn more, visit The Sophia Women’s Institute.