Brenna Haskins O'Brien - Trauma Informed Empowerment Coach

Super excited to visit my friend in North Carolina and attempt to see the monks as they .usa

I have been struggling with how to interact with what is going on in our country and in the world.

Placing myself in the energy of being against or hating anyone or anything doesn’t resonate anymore. (But the human ego struggle is real)

So I’m choosing to be FOR the things I believe in.

For human dignity, for kindness, for humane treatment of all, for love, for justice, and for peace.

I will advocate and I will protect those in need, especially children, in any way that I can.

Our children are watching us.

💖🕊️✨

I am so touched by the journey of the Buddhist monks as they Walk for Peace. .usa

I took an hour this morning to listen to the recording of their evening talk last night (on their FB page)

So many gems in this evening talk:

✨Start each morning with pen and paper (Not with your phone - which he calls our “lover”) 🤣

Write: “Today is going to be my peaceful day”

1. Read it
2. Put your hand on your heart
3. Breathe in, breathe out (3X)
4. Speak it out loud

Bless your day 🙏🏻

To bring peace to ourselves and others Practice:

mindfulness
compassion
and loving kindness

When we are hurt by others or injured- 10% of our mind is impacted

When we react - 90% of our mind is impacted 😮

(Which impacts our mind, body and emotional wellbeing)

💪Your power lies in your response

When someone says something hurtful

1. Pause
2. Breathe In breathe out
3. Breathe In breathe out

The air is free 😄

4. Find your center and inner calm

5. Respond: “May you be well, happy, and peaceful” 🙏🏻✨

(I feel No response can also be valid)

In the evening:

No phone or technology 1 hour before bed

1. Breathe in breathe out (at least 3X)
2. Say a prayer of forgiveness of self and others
3. Bless your day

If all of us do this together, we will change the world

It starts with us
within our families
Then it spreads to our community and our world

Imagine the impact 🙏🏻✨🕊️

Happy Holidays!
I’m spending the day nurturing my inner child and celebrating the day my way. 🎄✨

For all the cycle breakers: choose you and your inner peace this holiday season 🎄✨

Love walking in my Mom’s neighborhood. It’s so beautiful, peaceful and full of trees

What’s your favorite place to go to decompress?☀️🌿✨

🌑 Why I Struggle with the Celebration of Thanksgiving:

Every year, when November comes around, I feel uneasy, and my stomach tightens.

While so many people here in the US prepare for a holiday built on gratitude, family, and abundance, I feel a deeper grief, something older than me, carried in the collective unconscious, our nervous systems, carried in the land itself.

And the older I get, the more I understand why.

I struggle with celebrating Thanksgiving because underneath the cheerful rituals is a truth that has been erased, sanitized, and mythologized.

A truth rooted in displacement, genocide, and trauma.
And this year in particular, that truth is louder than ever.

🔍 Did You Know That The Trail of Tears Happened in the Same Season We Celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas?

🪶 The Cherokee Trail of Tears officially began in October 1838, the very season we now associate with cozy sweaters, pumpkin pie, and gratitude.

While families today gather around their tables celebrating a "shared harvest", Cherokee families in 1838 were:

• being rounded up at gunpoint
• forced into stockades
• stripped of home, community, and sovereignty
• marched over 800–1,000 miles (or more) in freezing rain, mud, and early winter storms
• watching their children and elders die from exposure, hunger, and disease

By December 1838, thousands of Cherokee were walking through snow and ice toward an unknown future in what is now Oklahoma.

The season when America celebrates gratitude, family, and abundance is the same season the Cherokee people experienced one of their most traumatizing moments.

And no matter how anyone tries to "dress it up" with a Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie, there is a darker truth many of us feel.

🧬 Trauma Echoes Across Time, And It’s Happening Again
Part of why this hits me so deeply right now is because we’re witnessing a terrifyingly familiar pattern today.

In the United States right now, immigrants, including children, are being:
• rounded up
• detained in overcrowded facilities
• deported without transparency
• separated from family
• sent to places we aren’t even told about
• facing real dangers of trafficking, abuse, and disappearance

And we are invited to celebrate and pretend it’s not happening.

History doesn’t repeat itself because we don’t know it.

It repeats because we refuse to acknowledge and feel it.

And Thanksgiving in its sanitized, mythologized form is part of that refusal.

Why this matters to me:

Because we are disgracing the memory of the people who walked before us.

Because injustice leaves an imprint in the collective nervous system.

Because when I see people being displaced, hidden, and harmed, I don’t just see the present, I feel the past.

And I refuse to call it “Thanksgiving.”

🌱 What I Choose Instead

Instead of participating in a holiday built on a myth, I am now choosing something else:

• Ancestral truth-telling
• Grief that is honest instead of hidden
• Healing the collective wound of stolen land and stolen people
• Putting my time and energy toward justice and healing, not denial

And if you feel called to honor this season differently, here are Native-led and immigrant-rights organizations doing meaningful work:

🪶 Native-Led Organizations:

• NDN Collective, Indigenous-led movement for land defense, justice, and liberation
• Native American Rights Fund (NARF), Legal defense of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights
• Cherokee Nation Foundation / Cherokee Family Research Center, Education, community support, and cultural preservation
• Indian Country Today (ICT), Indigenous journalism amplifying truth and lived experience

🌍 Immigrant Protection and Justice:

• RAICES, Legal and humanitarian assistance for detained immigrants
• ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, Advocacy and impact litigation
• The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, Protecting unaccompanied immigrant youth
• Al Otro Lado, a Human rights organization supporting asylum seekers and migrants at the border

Supporting and advocating for organizations like these feels more aligned with the truth of this season than spending hundreds on a meal rooted in myth.

🕊️ A Final Word

Celebrate Thanksgiving in a way that feels true for you and your family. Having deep gratitude for all we have and gathering with family and friends is important.

But if something in you aches this time of year, if something feels off, if sorrow, anger, or heaviness rises, you’re not imagining it.

Some of us feel the ancestral memory of trauma in our bodies.
Some of us are here to break the silence.
Some of us are here to tell our truth.

And this is mine:

I can no longer celebrate a holiday born from the harm of humans.

But I can choose remembrance and collective healing.

And this year, I’ll be spending the day with friends, not in the traditional sense, but in a way that honors remembrance for the people whose history still echoes through this season.

Sending love to all impacted by the past and present atrocities 🙏🏻

- Brenna Haskins O’Brien

Image: AI-generated artistic rendition created with assistance from ChatGPT, inspired by historical accounts of the Cherokee removal during the Trail of Tears.

✨ When you reconnect with who you truly are, everything begins to shift. ✨

I want to take a moment to celebrate one of my amazing clients (we’ll call her Susan for confidentiality). 💫

When Susan first came to me, she was struggling with confidence at work and often felt like an imposter because she didn’t have a college degree or certifications like many of her colleagues.

She often minimized her strengths and spoke critically of herself, something so many of us do when we’ve been conditioned to measure our worth by achievement or external validation.

Through our work together, something powerful began to shift. 🌿

Susan started to see beyond her résumé and accomplishments.

She discovered that what truly matters isn’t what she does, it’s who she is.

Her presence. Her intuition. Her integrity. Her light. ✨

As she reconnected with her true self, her outer world began to reflect that inner transformation.


She started showing up with grounded confidence and self-trust, and the Universe responded.

She released control over the outcome, took a trip to Chicago to recharge, and was offered a year-long project as the project lead. 🙌

Today, she’s standing taller, using her voice with confidence, and embodying the empowered woman she truly is.

Most importantly, she knows her worth, not because of what she achieves, but because she feels it from within. 💛

This is what growth looks like.

It’s not about rushing to heal or striving for perfection.
It’s about trust, courage, and alignment.
I’m so proud of her transformation! ✨
Your breakthrough might be right around the corner!

Saying goodbye to October with coffee and nature 🌳☕️✨

Visited the James Museum of Western Art today.