About Me
My passion in life is helping spiritually aware women to understand when they are in a toxic and destructive relationship and helping them to recover. I have experienced that pain and transformed it into a new passion for life, and I want to show other women that they can too.
About me
I am a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and holistic wellness coach specializing in helping women recover from grief, trauma, and loss caused by narcissistic emotional abuse.
My Story
When my second marriage began to unravel after I thought God gave me the love of my life – I was afraid, confused, and utterly lost. After becoming physically ill and heartbroken with the stress of, what I later understood to be, emotional abuse I finally broke free after years of trying to help us and change him. It was time to save myself and save my girls from losing their capable and up until then peaceful mom.
I often felt dismissed, was left alone a lot and started to feel taken for granted and that I didn’t have a real partner. Trying to share with him what I was concerned about or feeling, in an attempt to relate, was consistently taken as criticism.
This would bring the shaming, blaming or gaslighting — a term I didn’t even understand at the time, but became very familiar with. I questioned was I the crazy one here, but my gut told me I was not. I was up against too much and I was desperate for answers.
It was maddening and felt like I was being sucker punched between the bouts of what felt like genuine love, good times, and being put on a pedestal.
It was harrowing trying to figure it all out. When I finally got clear and experienced the disrespectful abuse that broke the proverbial camel’s back for the last time, I found the courage to leave for good. It was something to celebrate, but I felt like my life was over and like a part of me had died. I knew I’d never be the same.
Sound familiar?
As a woman with deep faith, having had a spiritual conversion at age 19 that changed my life I had nowhere to go but to God for emotional and mental strength. The God of Love that I know is faithful and meets us where we are. Do you know this to be true in your life too even if you may be having doubts right now?
Nothing is wasted in our lives when we believe that all things and experiences come to teach us and grow us up into our truest nature, which is love.
The lesson may be learning to really love yourself now.
The time I spent in that roller coaster marriage taught me so much about people and about myself. It was helping me to heal in deeper places that I didn’t even know needed healing. It led me to find a passion and purpose to help women like you in a more focused way, but I had to help myself first. Some of the ways I did that were to:
- Ask myself, how did it really feel in that marriage?
- Ask myself, how was I truly being dismissed and disrespected?
- I had to recall the red flags I didn’t pay attention to in the beginning.
- I had to admit his words and actions did not add up at times.
- I had to stop denying the truth and stop loving the potential of who I thought he was and wanted him to be.
- I had to take a good look at my fears about the marriage ending with my values and how it was going to affect my daughters and my legacy to them.
- I had to ask for help.
I got help from several therapists, and healers I had met and sought out along the way. I cried and grieved deeply. I prayed and meditated whenever I could. I showed up for family events and for work and took myself on a trip or two.
I began learning more about becoming a coach and writing the book that was taking shape inside me. I kept up with my yoga practice and created a comfortable sanctuary for my youngest daughter and I to call home. I watched countless movies as I worked on a mosaic piece, I was making for my oldest daughter’s wedding gift.
I gave myself time just to be.
Having been a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with a master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling for twenty years, I have been honored to work helping many though the various challenges and suffering that life inevitably brings to us all at times.
Before starting my own holistic health counseling and coaching practice in Towson, I realized that recovering women needed healers with specialties in grief and loss and trauma. They needed a self-care plan, education and new perspectives. Unfortunately, there are therapists out there that do not know how to identify this kind of abuse. I encountered several myself and was left feeling helpless. I finally found one that got it, and got him, and that made all the difference.
I felt validated and affirmed about the character issues my husband had. I finally felt like I had been truly understood by someone who knew what it was like to feel unsafe in an emotionally abusive relationship. He encouraged me not to have “magical thinking.”
He knew I was a praying woman, and he was a man of faith as well as a professional in his field. He helped me really accept that the only person I could change was myself. He said I deserved much happiness and gave me his blessing.
My life has been redeemed and my girls are thriving. The hard work and time I dedicated myself to in my own recovery has reaped the fruits of renewed faith, confidence, and wisdom. I have new energy and stronger intuition. I love and care for myself in healthy ways and have the clarity to continue creating the life I now live. I listen to my body.
What happened to you was not your fault, but it is your responsibility to yourself, and to those you love who depend on you, to heal.
This is exactly what I want for you and am so excited to share in and guide you on your journey to renewed hope, clarity and confidence. Isn’t it time to truly embrace the lessons life has taught you through this and step forward into your new beginning?
If you need holistic health counseling or coaching in the Towson, MD area, contact us today to schedule a free consultation or to inquire about our narcissistic abuse and toxic relationship recovery programs.
Soul of Healing
I can help you decide which Soul of Healing Group is right for you.
~ Donna Shin, LCPC, Certified Holistic Wellness Coach
I hope you'll join me! Check out the group offerings.
Credentials
- Certified Wellness Coach with the International Association of Wellness Professionals (IAWP) – May 2020
- Master of Science in Pastoral Counseling 2004 , Loyola University in Maryland
- License MD – LC2632
- NCC – National Certified Counselor – 2004
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional
- Level II GIM Training ( Guided Imagery with Music ) Mid Atlantic Training Institute 2008
- Mastering the Meaning of Mandalas 2008 Sponsored by the Art Therapy Program of George Washington University
- Brainspotting Certification – 2019
- Approved Supervisor – MD Board of Professional Counselors and Therapists
Trauma Informed
