A Healing Journey: Blanca Rodriguez on Forgiveness, Resilience & Rediscovering Joy

In this episode of the Inspiring Journeys podcast, Blanca Rodriguez, a medical and canine massage therapist, holistic life coach, and author, shares her journey of healing from childhood trauma. Growing up in a chaotic environment marked by loss and mental health struggles, she emphasizes the importance of breaking the silence around trauma. Blanca discusses the power of forgiveness, particularly towards her mother, and introduces the concept of DOSE—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins—as key to emotional well-being. She also talks about empowering women over 45 and embracing aging as growth. Blanca’s story is a reminder that while we can't change our past, we can heal and transform our wounds into wisdom.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The journey of breaking the cycle of generational trauma
• The transformative power of forgiveness for personal healing
• Exploring the DOSE acronym as a guide to happiness chemicals
• The benefits of fitness and health for women over 45
• Embracing self-love through life's challenges

Key Takeaways:

• Blanca’s journey demonstrates that even the most difficult experiences can lead to personal growth and a mission to help others heal.
• Openly addressing mental health struggles and family challenges is crucial to ending cycles of trauma and fostering healing.
• True healing begins with self-liberation through forgiveness, allowing for greater love, peace, and emotional well-being.
• By understanding and harnessing the power of our brain’s happy chemicals, we can actively improve our emotional and physical well-being.

Noteworthy Quotes:

"Are you going to continue with the generational trauma, or are you going to break the cycle?"

“The wounds are not my fault, but the healing is my responsibility.”

Blanca's Bio: Blanca Rodriguez is a holistic life coach, medical and canine massage therapist, author, speaker, and fitness instructor for individuals 45+. A passionate healer, she empowers others through forgiveness, wellness, and the D.O.S.E. method—harnessing dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins to cultivate joy, resilience, and lasting transformation.

More About Blanca:

Website: woundedhealer.us
Book: Impact Leadership with Blanca E. Rodriguez
Download First Chapter of Impact Leadership
Coaching Services

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Chapters

• 0:02 Healing From Childhood Trauma and Resilience
• 9:56 Transformation Through Trauma and Forgiveness
• 20:31 Empowerment and Wellness in Midlife

Transcript

Lauri Wakefield
00:40
Hi, welcome to the Inspiring Journeys podcast. Thanks for joining me today. I'm your host, Lauri Wakefield, and my guest today is Blanca Rodriguez. You want to say hi, Blanca. 

Blanca Rodriguez
00:50
Hello everybody, thank you for having me here. You're welcome. 

Lauri Wakefield
00:53
Thank you for joining me. Blanca is a holistic life coach. She's a medical massage therapist, a certified canine therapist, an author, a speaker and a fitness instructor for the 45-plus age group. She is the author of the book called Impact Leadership, which we will talk about toward the end of the episode. But let's first start by talking about your journey, your story. So you had your website is called the Wounded Healer, and that was probably because of things that you experienced in your life. So you want to talk a little bit about that, like where your trauma began and what it was about, what it entailed?

Blanca Rodriguez
01:22
We get inspired by traumatic experiences that we have had in our lives to help others improve their quality of life, and that's why Wounded Healer LLC just clicked and I relate so much to it because of childhood, untreated trauma, and I grew up around very good parents, and when I was eight years old, tragedy struck in our family. My father was killed in his place of work and life was never the same again. My mother, she fell into a very deep depression and she never recovered from it. And this was the 70s, and these years were the years when nobody will talk about mental health, nobody will talk about mental illnesses. It was a you don't talk about. You don't talk about mental illnesses, you don't talk about the dead. 
02:32
So I was in a very hard situation, not understanding how to first of all, grief the tragic loss of my most important person in my life and then my poor mother succumbing to her mental illness and being emotionally absent from us. And we grew up around a lot of violence, not only the violent death of my father, but my mother and her mental illness. Unfortunately, she was a person with a lot of violence within her, and we were in a world of you silence yourself. You don't say nothing and you keep on going. You keep on going. That's the phrase that I have heard from my mother the most, although since my childhood and at that time as a little kid, I didn't understand. I said, what is this keep on going thing? But later on in life it served me as much of one of the biggest lessons of my life that, yes, we actually do keep on going in this life. Yeah, absolutely so, with these very dark seasons. It led me to growth. It led me to a lot of despair. It led me to a lot of shame, low self-esteem, low self-worth. I didn't know how to grieve, I didn't know how to express myself. 
03:50
The one person that was left in the household, that was the second most important person. That is, my mother. To this day, she was dealing with her own demons, so to speak, dealing with her own untreated, chronic, untreated mental illness. She's 94 years old now and she has a bad stages of dementia. But her journey was simply a very dark one and unfortunately these years it was the 70s, the 80s that you just don't talk about these things Right and it affected everybody tremendously. Throughout all of our lives I lived around many family members that they had untreated chronic mental illnesses. There's a menu for mental illnesses. I think my family had them all, unfortunately. Yeah, and we live, we learn. It was very dark seasons, very confusing times and of course we grew up in a way that is okay, this is supposed to be the normal. So, even if I don't understand it, this is supposed to be the normal. But then later on in life, then we all come to understand that this was not normal at all. 
05:02
And it took me a lot of perseverance, and the first thing that the first wall that I had to bring down, was the wall of my own silence, with my own trauma, and once I started searching for that support that is always there, by the way then a new door opened in my life of okay, I don't have to do this alone anymore. So it's been a long life of growing, suffering, falling, getting back up and, of course, we do keep on going. 

Lauri Wakefield
05:36
I was going to add something to what you were saying when you were talking about keep on going. I know in my childhood there was a lot of abuse. There was emotional, mental and some physical abuse too, but anyway, my mother would always, not always but if I would say something she would say, "Today's a new day, Lauri, you have to move forward." And I said to her, "Yeah, you're right, it is a new day, but it doesn't mean that what happened yesterday doesn't matter." 

Blanca Rodriguez
06:03
That's right, absolutely right. Yeah, my mother was to keep on going and you keep on going and you keep on going, and my mother in her violence. Of course there was a lot of emotional, mental and physical violence as well. It was the days that slipper. She would say I'm gonna give you la chancla. And when she would say that, oh, you better run, because she meant business, I'm out of here. Oh, no matter how far I went, oh that slipper will always hit me. 
06:41
She was a pitcher. She was, she should have been a pitcher in the big leagues and, oh my god, incredible. 

Lauri Wakefield
06:45
Okay. So what about other family members? Did you have any brothers or sisters? 

Blanca Rodriguez
06:48
Yes, I sure do. I'm the youngest of three siblings my older brother and my older sister and it's like we've been talking over the years and opening up about their personal journey with mom, because we all have a different one. And one thing we do agree is this we all got our share of moms crazy. That's the way it is, and we all have our personal stories that we shared and we are very, but the one thing here we go again is like when there's darkness is always light somewhere. Right, because the one thing that my mom really tried her hardest to do was to give us an education to makes us independent people, self-sufficient. She was a very she still is to this day a very big fan of you pay your way. These are things that I value tremendously.
07:46
My mom was a traveler, so she always really instilled in us is you need to travel, you need to see the world. There's so much more than this, so that's something that I really honor in her tremendous. She doesn't go without a fight. Whatever fight that may be, she doesn't really go without a fight, and that is something to definitely be honored. My mother comes from extreme poverty and she always told us that one thing that she promised herself is that when she will become a mom, we will never experience poverty. She complied, that is what she said.
 
Lauri Wakefield
08:21
Wow, even without your father. 

Blanca Rodriguez
08:23
Oh yeah, absolutely Absolutely. She made it work and no matter what, no matter how dark her life was because it was really dark she definitely that side of her, that fighter, that resiliency, that persistence really shone through, but unfortunately it was overshadowed by mental illness.
 
Lauri Wakefield
08:44
So while your father was still alive, was she working? 

Blanca Rodriguez
08:47
No, no. 

Lauri Wakefield
08:48
Okay, so she had a she had a like totally.

Blanca Rodriguez 
08:50
Yeah, it was a total transformation from night to day. It was from one second, and your life was this? Not anymore. Your life is totally different right now, from now on, and she threw herself into it the best possible way she could.
 
Lauri Wakefield
09:06
Okay, when you started to work through things, how old were you? I was in my 30s, actually. 

Blanca Rodriguez
09:10
I was in my 30s, actually. 

Lauri Wakefield
09:12
Okay. So up until that point, did you have names for things? Was there an awareness there? Because I think sometimes when you grow up in craziness, that's your normal in your home, that's what your home life is like, and it's not that you don't question it, but it's confusing, like you use the word confusion, so it's. You can't really like work through it and make sense out of it and you just keep because every day is a new day. So you do move forward, but then when you get to that point where you start looking back and you start analyzing your feelings and your thoughts and how it affected you, yeah, it's something that can take a while.
 
Blanca Rodriguez
09:47
Oh yeah. It took me decades, all the way to my 30s, when I actually became a mom myself. That was the pivotal moment. That was the aha moment of OK, what are you going to do with your life now? There's people that really depend on you for absolutely everything. Are you going to continue with the generational trauma or are you going to break the cycle? So there was like many very powerful decisions to be made there, and before I became a mom, my life was an entirely different story. I was in a downhill spiral most of the time of partying, drugs, alcohol, jumping from person to person, and it was a consequence of untreated childhood trauma. My father died violently. My mother was a very violent person. Her mental illness really took over her.
 
10:34
I am a sexual assault and sexual violence survivor since I was nine years old. I never understood what happened, but I always knew that it was wrong. But I kept silence because I was ashamed of it. I didn't know who to turn to, because if I couldn't turn to anyone upon my father's death, that was something that it was equally horrible. I had nobody to turn to. So when I become an author is when I finally I said it all out, I brought it all out and I said okay, let me make this trauma, this silence, this shame that I endured for so many decades of my life. Let me turn it into something good, into something that can really help others not to do what I did. Something happened to you speak up, help will come. Don't do it alone. So that became I totally transformed it into something bigger than myself, and it's totally worth it. I'm very, I'm proud and honored to be able to do this. 

Lauri Wakefield
11:36
So that is one of the speaker topics that you talk about when you do speaking engagements. So another topic that you talk about is forgiveness, and you say forgiveness, the heart of the matter. So why don't you talk a little bit about that? 

Blanca Rodriguez
11:48
Yes, absolutely. I believe that there is a lot of moments when people say, "Oh, I'm sorry, forgive me", but I continue doing the same exact thing. So for me, that is the kind of forgiveness that is a fake forgiveness, right. But when forgiveness is spoken from the heart, the lesson is learned and changes are made for the better. That is the heart of the matter. If I didn't forgive, starting by forgiving myself and then forgiving my mother, I really wouldn't be speaking to you today. That is for sure.
12:25
My life would have been a whole, entirely different story. Probably I wouldn't even be alive because I was abusing myself so much for so long. So I take it lightly. I am grateful every single day of my life for waking up, for going to sleep, because my life could have been so much different. I could have been either dead by an overdose. I could have been dead by domestic abuse, because my partner's violence attracts violence and my ex-partner was a very violent person. 
12:59
So I could have been one of those stories that two kids are left alone with no parents because one died of an overdose or the other one got killed or murdered, suicide, right, and I could have been that person. But it had a miracle happen in my life. Thank God for that and I am so grateful every single day that I just took matters into my hands and I didn't do it alone and I look for help that I so very much needed and deserved, and life did took a turn for the better, and the better and the more we work on these very important issues that we have, the better off we will be, the most important investment that we do is the one in ourselves, and building and learning about self-love. 
13:49
That was totally foreign to me. I didn't understand that concept and it's real, and once I started embracing the human being that I am, with my flaws, without them, something really beautiful happened, which was both. 

Lauri Wakefield
14:05
Yeah, I was going to talk about, or thinking when you were talking about, the forgiveness part and part of what you said, which is the truth. It's the change that takes place, like if somebody comes up to you and they say, "I'm sorry for doing that", but they do it again. That's not change, so they're amending when they make an amendment. 
14:17
they don't even need to apologize, they don't even need to verbally say I'm sorry. The amendment, the behavior itself can be the apology. That's something that I learned. I don't know if you ever got into a 12-step program, but I actually got into a 12-step program for alcohol when I was 30, so a long, long time ago, and I've been sober ever since. But, that is one of the 12 steps. Is made amends to everyone when possible, and yeah, how can you go up to somebody and say I'm sorry and do the same thing again. Obviously you're not sorry, right?
 
Blanca Rodriguez
14:55
That's right. That's right, absolutely, absolutely. And the biggest part, one of the most important parts, it was with my mother's relationship. That was so confusing and so violent since my father's death. And when she came and she finally made amends and it was really visible, palpable, that, okay, you really mean this time You're not going to fall into the same pattern again and again. That is real forgiveness. That is the heart of the matter right there, and it was a beautiful experience and I'm very in peace with my mom. I love my mom very much. I visit Puerto Rico as many times as I can to go care, to go take care of her, so my sister can take a break. My sister is her caregiver and many things have changed since then and I'm very happy about it. 

Lauri Wakefield
15:46
I wanted to say too. I think part of what you're talking about with the forgiveness is actually within ourselves, like when we've been. 

Blanca Rodriguez
15:50
Absolutely. 

Lauri Wakefield
15:51
Because I think that you can forgive without the other person changing their behavior. I know with myself, like with my dad, there was a forgiveness that took place with him, even though his behaviors continued. But then it was like I looked at it, and it's easier to forgive because he's dead, so it's easier to forgive. He died when I was 27. 
16:00
So it's easier to forgive something when you're not going through the same things over and over again, but you can still forgive even though the other person doesn't change, because forgiveness is for ourselves. It's not to make what the other person did. Okay, it's for ourselves to be at peace.

Blanca Rodriguez
16:23
Oh absolutely. I cannot agree with you more. I was a very troubled soul for so long and so long and my silence and my shame and my going deep down that rabbit hole until I started to understand it is okay. The wounds are not my fault, but the healing is my responsibility. It's fully responsible for my own actions, for making changes, for breaking that cycle of generational trauma is my huge responsibility Because when I experienced this change, everything will follow. Everything is pretty remarkable. 

Lauri Wakefield
17:00
Yeah, it is Okay. So another one of the topics that you talked about. It's an acronym, DOSE. You want to talk a little bit about that, what the DOSE stands for? 
 
Blanca Rodriguez
18:08
Yes, absolutely. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins these are the happy chemicals of our bodies and I love acronyms. I learn much better by acronyms. I'm an easy learner, like that. And dopamine is the chemical of being happy, of achieving something, of having that high when people say, wow, that is dope, when yes, definitely is. That's what it means when you achieve something, when you did great on the test. I'm not really good at testing, but when I will do good in tests, I will be like, oh my God, that is so amazing. Oxytocin is the love hormone we have when experience love, when we hug somebody, when we kiss, when there's intimacy. That is oxytocin. Serotonin is the mood enhancer. Serotonin is wonderful and the serotonin levels goes up when we receive one session of massage. With one session of massage, the cortisol levels of our bodies, which is the stress hormones, goes down over 30 percent and the serotonin levels go up by over 32 percent. 
18:26
I love it, I love it how these researchers come up with these numbers. I don't know, but it's amazing. And of course, the endorphins is the runner's high. If you have a great workout, if you do physical activity, then after that workout you're like, oh my God, I feel so much better. That is the chemical endorphins kicking in. I absolutely love it. I geek out a lot over it
. 
Lauri Wakefield
18:49
Okay, so you've been doing medical massage therapy for a long time, and then you also became a certified canine massage therapist. You want to talk a little bit about that. What brought that up? 

Blanca Rodriguez
18:59
Of course. I've always been a helper and one of the things that my mother always taught us is to be helpful, to be useful and to help others. And definitely I've been into the helping industry for a very long time, starting with when I was a server, all the way to being a massage therapist. I'm being a licensed massage therapist for 20 years actually and it's about seeing how your patients feel better after one session of massage. To me, that is a huge achievement. Every time I massage someone, I cater to everybody's individual needs. Massage is not about one size fits all. The more questions that your massage therapist asks you, the more of a great service you will receive. So be very aware of that. If a massage therapist doesn't say anything, how are you doing today? Go on the table. Then this therapist most likely, unfortunately, does a one-size-fits-all. That's for routine and that will be it. And, on the other hand, when your massage therapist asks many questions, make sure that you're very well taken care of. I asked many questions before, during and, of course, after the massage. 
20:21
How did I get into canine massage therapy? I've been a dog lover since I was a little girl and I saw this. We do continuing education courses every two years as part of having our licensing here in Florida and I found about animal massage therapy. It's a very ancient practice actually. It's been around since 2700 BC and it came here to the Americas in the 70s actually. So I got interested in equine massage. I said, wow, a horse, they're so beautiful, I love it. Wow, they are big, they're intimidating. So I said, okay, I'm going to let go of that. But then I saw in an amazing magazine canine massage therapy certification and I jumped into it. It was one of the best investments I have done in my professional career. 
21:09
I absolutely love massaging our beautiful dogs because they are mammals, so are we. They have muscle groups, organs, emotions and feelings. And my school group practice with animals especially this was I was chosen for this is with seniors, so I massage a lot of senior dogs. I have massaged dogs from the moment they're puppies all the way to their passing, so I have massaged them all. I have done a lot of massage to competition dogs, agility dogs that they get physically, so it's a beautiful practice and the difference is that when the dog is done with the massage, they will just get up and leave, versus us humans that we are told you have to leave, only difference. But it's a very powerful practice that really helps your dog feel better, be better, be physical, physically better, giving more longevity, giving more quality of life. And no canine massages not rubbing or petting. Canine massages must flash, of course. This is the manipulation of muscle or soft tissue with the purpose of healing and or relaxation. 

Lauri Wakefield
22:23
So there's like a nonverbal communication that takes place between you and that animal. 

Blanca Rodriguez
22:27
Always. 

Lauri Wakefield
22:28
Okay, so when you decided to write a book, when did you decide to do it? 

Blanca Rodriguez
22:32
I wrote my chapter on this book. It was at the beginning of my 50s, when I was definitely going into a whole different stage of my life, of my evolution, of my healing, and I got offered a chapter at a book with 29 other co-authors from all over the world, and our stories are similar. Our stories are the ones of going downhill, falling deep down that rabbit hole and coming out through the other side, and it's powerful. My story is 2,000 words. 
23:11
I'm letting you know who I am, what I've been through, why I'm here and why I will still be here no matter what, because we do keep on going. So that was the first time that I openly let everybody know where I come from, where my child trauma came from, what happened. I went into detail and that's how my siblings found out many things about me, because they never knew until then. And they asked me why didn't you say nothing? And I say, why didn't you say nothing? It's like, why don't you? Why didn't you say nothing? Because we were indoctrinated into the same exact mindset of you keep silent. 
23:50
You don't talk about the day, you don't talk about bad things, you don't talk about anything that's going on with you. So, yeah, okay. So you're talking about a different book, the Impact Leadership. 

Lauri Wakefield
23:51
So, yeah, okay. So you're talking about a different book, the Impact Leadership. Is that your book? 

Blanca Rodriguez
23:57
It's my co-authorship.  

Lauri Wakefield
23:58
Yeah, okay. So you're in that book with other people who've written their stories Okay, okay. And then I wanted to talk about the fitness instructor for people in the 45 plus age group. I actually my podcast and my website is about women 50 plus but I've been thinking about dropping it down to the 45 plus, just because I think that's a transition point, I think, like where women are probably even in their early 20 excuse me, early 40s, they're going through the peri-menopause and things are just changing. Life is just becoming different. You're becoming different, yeah, but anyway, I thought that was interesting. 

Blanca Rodriguez
24:32
The 45 plus, yeah I, I did the say, I the that. First I was like, okay, let me put fitness for 55 plus people, because there's a lot of communities here in Florida that are 55 plus active adult living. But then I started doing a lot of research, especially when I was in my I'm post-menopausal now. But when I entered my menopausal stages I was like I need to really educate myself about this, because there's so much lack of information for women and this has been we've been demonized for so long, just because we enter a stage that is natural in our lives exactly right and when I went into full blown researching all of these things, I said, no, I have to start going a little bit back on the clock and offer fitness services for women. 
 
Blanca Rodriguez
25:29
Yeah, because there's so many there's so many changes physically that we are going through. I did go through all of these changes, but I can tell you something my ride was much smoother because I had physical activity in my life, fitness instruction in my life, and that is undeniable. The first thing that fitness instruction helped me with it was my sleep, because the sleep is one of the things that goes out the window and, of course, the wound swings because of all these changes that we're going chemically. We're going through so many changes inside of us that we don't even understand. 

Lauri Wakefield
26:07
Right. It's the lack of estrogen.

Blanca Rodriguez
26:09
Yeah, it's lack of estrogen, and this is what happens with estrogen. Estrogen is created in our reproductive system and wherever there's blood, estrogen goes. So when the lack of estrogen starts happening, the first place that it gets affected is our brain. But it's because our brain and our bodies are starting to readjust to the new changes that our bodies are going through. And a lot of people I heard it for decades of my life from my aunties, my old mother, that it was okay, this is the end of my life, I'm done. I feel miserable. I feel miserable. The more you say that you feel miserable, the more miserable you will feel. So I understand that menopause is a natural process of our lives, that the more informed that we are, the better off we will be, and I can tell you this in my 50s I have achieved much more than I did on my 30s and 40s combined. So, ladies out there, don't give up just because you're entering perimenopause or menopausal stage, just because we are fabulous regardless.
 
Lauri Wakefield
27:18
And yeah, and I think it's opportunities to do things, especially if you've raised children so much time goes to raising them that you don't have a whole lot of time, a lot of times, to do the things that you want to do for yourself and just in your life in general. So I think that's probably about everything, everything that I wanted to cover. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add before we end the episode? 

Blanca Rodriguez
27:40
I can tell all of the listeners this Don't let your past define who you are, and don't let your past define your future. Remember, the most important investment that we do is the one on ourselves, no matter what age we are. Yeah. 

Lauri Wakefield
27:59
So that's going to wrap things up for this episode. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you'd like more information about Blanca, you can visit her website at wounded healer [dot] us. I'll link to her website in the show notes and then I'll also include links to the book and to the services that you offer, even though the life coaching can be done virtually. And then do you do the fitness virtually or not? 

Blanca Rodriguez
28:19
I do fitness virtually and I teach people the basics of canine massage therapy so they can help the doggies at home. 
 
Lauri Wakefield
28:23
All right. So if you'd like to see the show notes for today's podcast, you can find them on my website at inspired living for women [dot] com. The show notes will be listed under podcast show notes, episode 13. If you'd like to join me as I continue my conversations with other guests exploring topics for women over 50, please be sure to subscribe to the Inspiring Journeys podcast. Thanks again and have a great day. 

Blanca Rodriguez
28:38
Thank you.