Finding Healing Through Organisation: A Personal Story of Overcoming Childhood Trauma

Trauma and disorganisation often walk hand-in-hand, though we rarely connect these dots in our healing journeys. In this deeply personal episode, I share my experience of childhood sexual abuse and how an unexpected tool (organising my physical space and finances) became instrumental in my recovery process.

From ages 8-10, I endured regular abuse that left me emotionally numb for years. At 18, standing before the courtroom, I made the pivotal choice to forgive my abuser, not for his sake, but for my freedom. This choice opened the door to healing, but the journey was far from linear. Even after marrying the love of my life at 24, unprocessed trauma resurfaced, proving that our past requires attention even when our present seems perfect.

The turning point came through organising. Starting with our finances and then moving to organising our small two-bedroom unit, I discovered that creating order in my external environment helped establish an internal sense of control that trauma had stolen. That first bathroom cupboard I decluttered represented more than just tidiness, it was reclaiming agency over my life. As I continued organising spaces and tracking spending, both my home and mind became calmer. The changes were gradual but transformative.

If you're struggling with chaos and overwhelm while also carrying past hurts, I want you to know these challenges may be connected. Start small, perhaps with a non-sentimental space like I did and pair your organising efforts with professional support for emotional healing. Every item you intentionally keep or release can become a stepping stone toward the ordered, purposeful life you deserve. Your past doesn't have to define your future and finding control in your physical space might just help you rediscover peace in your heart and mind.

Chapters

• 0:00 Trigger Warning & Introduction
• 1:56 My Childhood Trauma Experience
• 4:19 The Power of Forgiveness
• 6:28 How Organisation Became My Healing
• 11:20 Finding Control & Peace Through Order
• 15:11 Hope For Your Journey Forward

Transcript

Mel: 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Organised. I just wanted to start by giving a bit of a trigger warning that this episode will cover. It'll touch on points of childhood sexual abuse, depression and anxiety, so if any of these things are triggering for you, please just skip this episode. Welcome to Beyond Organised, a podcast that helps you simplify your life and amplify your purpose. I'm Mel Schenker, life coach speaker, founder of She's Organised, but, more importantly, a wife and mum of four little kids.

Mel: 0:49

If you've ever felt overwhelmed, like you're constantly juggling everything but never quite catching up, this is the place for you. Here we go beyond just the tidying up and creating systems. We're talking about real-life strategies that bring order to your life, but also we talk about the things beyond the organizing, the things that really matter, like your parenting relationships and so much more. So grab your coffee and let's dive in. So I wanted to give a little bit of a further background into me, into trauma, healing, forgiveness and how that all plays a part in my journey with organizing, and I'm hoping that it will help some of you who have maybe walked through similar experiences or other forms of grief and trauma.

Mel: 1:35

So, when I was a child so between the ages of eight and 10, I was sexually abused quite regularly by a trusted adult friend and I was unable to tell my parents at the time due to various threats and everything. But it came out when I was 12 and I assured them it was fine. I just wanted to move on and forget about it. So that's what we did until I was 15 and my dad walked in on me self-harming, and that was again another difficult moment for my parents. My dad still, even to this day, is dealing with it. But at that time I wasn't happy, I wasn't sad. I literally felt nothing. I felt no emotions. I hadn't cried in years and it still, even at that point, was going to be about another three years before I even cried again. So pain was the only thing I could feel. And that's why I did it, because it was almost like reminding myself that I'm still alive, I'm still human, because when you don't feel anything, your brain does a lot of things, questions a lot of things. But I promised from that moment that I wouldn't do it again, and I didn't. I didn't do it again, but it was very difficult starting to process all the things that happened. We went through, the police gave statements. We went through the police, gave statements and it eventually went to court when I was 18. So pretty much from the ages of 8 to 18, I was trapped, I guess you could say.

Mel: 3:16

Apart from that part of my life, I did have a very good childhood. I had a very good upbringing, went to a great school, I had good friends. So my life overall was pretty good. So I'm not complaining definitely not complaining and my parents did a fantastic job and they still do a great job, more so now with the grandkids because I am 36.

Mel: 3:38

But that was a tough time for all of us and I distinctly remember the day before going into the courtroom. I made that decision to forgive him, and not because he deserved it, certainly didn't condone what he did at all. I wanted him to still get justice on it. But it was for me. It was because I wanted to be able to walk out of that courtroom knowing that that part of my life was now done and behind me, and for the most part it was. But it still took time. It still took a lot of time with healing and I knew that there were going to be certain periods of my life where I was going to have to deal with it again, particularly when it came to relationships.

Mel: 4:29

Fast forward to when I got married. I was 24 and I also moved out of home at the same time, so it all happened at once and I knew and my husband was prepared for the fact that there was going to be a bit of an adjustment, given the fact of what I'd walked through was going to potentially bring up issues in our marriage and our physical relationship. And I know I married the best man I really did. He's been a fantastic husband throughout this whole process and he's an incredible father. So I am so incredibly blessed and even at the time I knew I wanted to get married to him. This is what I wanted, this was the life I wanted.

Mel: 5:17

But something still happened in me that I kind of went into a little bit of a depressive state again just after I got married. Wasn't due to him or anything he did, and I pretty much had everything I wanted really, but it was just bringing up parts of my past that were really hard to deal with, that I couldn't really deal with until I was in this situation. So a big part of moving forward was the forgiveness, because I know I wouldn't have met my husband, I would not have these four beautiful children, I wouldn't have this life if I hadn't forgiven, because that freed me to be able to move forward in my life. So if that is something that you've struggled with, I do encourage you to really sit with it and think about what this will do for you Because, as I said, it doesn't condone anything that's happened to you. It just frees you and enables you to be able to move forward. So, even though that was one part of it, the other part of the healing was actually starting to get my life in order. So that's where organizing comes in.

Mel: 6:31

Now, as you would have heard before, I was so disorganized when I was first married I mean, obviously before that too, but this is sort of the real adulting part, because that's when I grew up and I moved out of home and I thought I was an adult, honestly Gosh. So I mean I always paid the bills on time and I was responsible, but I didn't, was just so out of order. Everything was so chaotic really, and the first step that I took to getting organized was actually with the finances. So my husband's friends at the time they were a couple and they were doing really well with their budgeting and stuff. And so then they gave us some tips and gave us their spreadsheet and everything kind of evolved from there. But I started to pay attention to what was coming in and what was going and I realized a lot of the money was going on little things and it was little things within the home. And so when I started recognizing where the money was going because I knew where it was coming from and it wasn't a lot, so when I knew where it was going, I, it wasn't a lot. So when I knew where it was going I then started to deal with things in the home. But even then that wasn't straight away.

Mel: 7:51

I went to an event at church and this lady was talking about Joshua Becker's book, the More of Less. And that was actually a turning point because I never even thought of decluttering before. I know you're probably laughing like who is this simpleton, but I just had not contemplated the thought of ever getting rid of anything, because why would you do that? You bought it. You might need it. Why would you get rid of it? But it opened the whole door and it made me realize that we just had so much stuff we didn't need. We lived in a little two-bedroom unit which in years to follow after that would soon have two kids in there as well.

Mel: 8:34

But I started in the bathroom because that was the least overwhelming place. It had no sentimental items or anything like that. And I started in the bathroom and I realized like we had you know, eight shampoos and five soaps and I don't know enough like earbuds and stuff to last probably 10 years, like it's almost like I'd go to the shops and be like, oh yeah, I think we're running low on that and I'd grab it and just all these little things that I'm sure a lot of you have done at some point too. And when I started going through the bathroom it was hard to get rid of some things Now, things that were sealed and perfectly good, but I knew I had an excessive amount of that would probably take years to get through. I gave to friends and family who needed it and wasn't going to add to their clutter. But I got through the bathroom pretty quick. I got through it like in a day.

Mel: 9:25

And that was a big turning point for me because then when I went back to the budget and started going through the financial side of things, because I was conscious of it. I stopped just buying things for the bathroom just in, just in case, because I knew exactly what was in there, because I'd just gone through it and I wasn't going to just stock up on things that, to be honest, I probably wasn't even going to get to for another year or two. Like it's not like we were living in a pandemic. At that time I didn't need a whole lot of toilet paper. So I very quickly then flowed into other areas of the home, going through the bedroom, the kitchen and all that kind of stuff, and because it's almost like taking inventory of what I had or what we had, and so having that in the back of my mind, it stopped me from doing a lot of purchases that were unnecessary. And so between the money and the home sort of backwards and forwards, they worked hand in hand and I very quickly started to get a taste of what organizing was like. But through that process that really helped me heal from a lot of things in my past, because I just assumed I was really disorganized, I was never going to be organized. I had all these other issues but never really connected it to the fact that I had a lot to deal with growing up and in the early days of my marriage too.

Mel: 10:50

So I want to encourage you that if you're someone that recognizes that you're not the most organized person, your home feels chaotic. As soon as you walk in, you're just not at peace. There's just stress and clutter, both physical and mental. No matter where you look, just throughout your day, at work, at home, it's all full on. If you have walked through some tough stuff in your life, I encourage you to make some time, with some grace, to revisit some of that. It's going to be hard and if you have got a counselor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a professional of some sort to help you through that, I would encourage you to do so during this. But it is worth actually sorting through some of those past hurts and pain to actually identify that maybe those are the things that have been contributing to the chaos in your current situation. It is possible to regain control of your life Now.

Mel: 12:03

I'm not going to talk about you know a few years fast forward from there and how I went too far the other way. I can talk about that another time. But this was about me regaining some control for me and feeling like an adult. Yes, all of that kind of stuff when you're young but it was part of my healing journey was regaining some control and order over my life. And when the money started to improve it still took many, many years to get out of debt and all of that, but it was improving, it was heading the right way. My home was a lot more calm. Even my husband would come home from an 80-hour work week and just even he would be like it is so nice to come home and it's clean and it's done, and I didn't even have to do a whole lot of cleaning at that point. I didn't have kids at that point, so my gosh, life was so much easier then and I didn't even know it.

Mel: 13:01

But I very quickly realized that this was something that I needed to do in order to feel some peace and some balance and some order in my life. So I know it's a little bit of a different take on this episode and it can be a bit raw and a bit vulnerable. And, look, it's taken me many, many, many, many, many years of processing and healing and working with professionals, and that as well, to get to a point where I can talk about what happened and not break down crying or anything like that. So I am hoping that giving you just a little snippet, a little bit of background and insight into my life and my journey will help you a bit with yours, because if I can't use the bad stuff in my life that's happened for me for good, then all it ends up being is bad stuff and that's just not how I want to live my life.

Mel: 14:06

Now I've turned it around and made it good stuff for me, but I want to be able to do that for you and I would love the dark parts of your history to become part of the stepping stools for your future, that you can actually have a future filled with hope, filled with joy, because, believe it or not, you can feel that again. I want you to be able to have a life that is living and that this part, this organizing part, is just a small part in the grand scheme of things. Now it might be a big focus right now while you're on this journey, but it's going to become normal and automatic and once you've done the real hard stuff, like you, go through all the decluttering and everything like that, and then it's just maintaining and that can still take a bit of effort, but it's certainly not as difficult and you just got to start somewhere and you can start small and I've got a number of resources and that that can help you. And I just want to encourage you that the chaos, the disorganization, all the kind of overwhelm that you're feeling right now doesn't have to be what you're feeling even tomorrow.

Mel: 15:20

That every day is a new day. Every day has a new opportunity to be able to move forward, and don't let your past define you, don't let that be the excuse that holds you back from living a life of purpose and of meaning and of intention. Don't let it hold you back. And trust me, if I can do it and I walked through some pretty dark stuff if I can do it, you can too. And look, that's not to discredit what anyone has gone through as well any trauma, any pain, anything like that. But I just want to encourage you that there is hope you can go from a dark place and be walking daily in the light.

Mel: 16:05

It is possible and I'm a living example of it, and I do hope that as you get started or as you continue on your organising journey, that you focus on the things that are your reasons. Why Is it your relationship with your partner? Is it your children? Is it for your dream career? Just focus on why you want to have a life that is a bit more organized, and it will make the process just all the more easier. If you loved this episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want to continue the conversation, you can connect with me on Instagram at @shes. organised, or, for some free resources, head over to beyondorganised. com. Slas toolkit. Remember organising is a tool to live the purposeful life beyond it. See you next time.