Heal and Thrive: Chrisanthi Voukatidis on Using Writing for Self-Transformation

Life can change in the blink of an eye. No one knows this better than Chrisanthi Voukatidis, a massage therapist who woke up in the hospital with a broken body and embarked on a journey of self-transformation. Tune in to learn how she was able to heal and thrive through writing. Show Notes | Transcript "I had to really sit with it and say, okay, this is the truth, the reality of what had really happened emotionally, and to do the deeper healing work." - Chrisanthi Voukatidis     Chrisanthi Voukatidis’ journey is not only a testament to the human spirit, it's a magnificent example of resilience and transformation. Following a deadly motorcycle accident, she was left severely injured both physically and emotionally. Chrisanthi spent most of 2018 learning to come to terms with her new reality. Her tenacity and faith saw her stand again, defying medical expectations. As a result, she transformed an adverse situation into self-discovery and growth, unearthing the therapeutic potential of writing. In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the profound healing that can come from expressing emotions on paper. Conquer your fears and grief, transforming them into driving forces for personal growth. Understand the compelling power of love, and self-love, in the pursuit of a fulfilling life. Experience life to the fullest through deep love and genuine engagement. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Neil McKinlay: Healing Through Meditation and Community Healing Power of Poetry with Brenda Bryan Unleash Your Most Epic Life with Meredith Alexander Resources: Connect with Chrisanthi at cvlambo (at) gmail.com Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 - Gloria Grace Rand Namaste. I am Gloria Grace, the light messenger and creator of The L.O.V.E. Method, and women entrepreneurs hire me to clear the inner blocks, keeping you stuck so you can put yourself first and live the life you want now. And I am so delighted to have an awesome guest with us today who started her career in the family hairdressing business before embarking on a seven-year journey as a cruise ship guest relations manager. But then she kind of changed careers. So Chrisanthi Voukatidis now became a massage therapist and specialized in Hawaiian lomi lomi and Thai massage and studied the healing arts around the word. Then, you know, life always does this to us, doesn't it? A life altering experience presented her with the ultimate challenge, which led her to heal and transform herself. And we're going to hear all about that in just a moment. But officially now, I want to welcome Chrisanthi to Live Love Engage. 00:01:04 - Chrisanthi Voukatidis Hello, Gloria. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to be here with you. Thank you for having me. 00:01:09 - Gloria Grace Rand Well, I am really looking forward to this conversation because I have a feeling you and I have a few things in common. I know we already do have one thing in common and that we were discussing before we started the recording today, that we both grew up in Michigan and, in fact, not too far away from each other either, which is pretty cool. But I want to know more about. I always like to start these interviews asking our guests about the journey that brought them to the place they are now and doing the work that they're doing now. So since I mentioned in the introduction a little bit about this life altering experience, I would love to know a little bit more about that and how that did enable you to be able to heal and transform yourself. 00:02:00 - Chrisanthi Voukatidis Well, thank you so much. My life has been full of adventure and abrupt changes that have led me down some really fantastic paths. And the previous 20 years or so, 15 years, I was working as a massage therapist and just loving it. Loving, loving, loving that industry. And unfortunately, fortunately, as life would have it, I was going through a divorce that had been a 20-year relationship, and that had shaken me quite a bit. It took me a little while to get my footing on that, and I was just so thankful to have a profession that I adored. And as I was putting my life back together from that, I was starting to catch my footing and catch my stride and feeling good about myself and thinking, okay, I can do this now. And then one day, I left my apartment to go out for lunch, went out for a wonderful ride, and ended up waking up in an ICU. I had fallen 44 feet off of an overpass from the back of a motorcycle and broken my entire body from my collarbone down to my feet. 00:03:37 - Gloria Grace Rand Oh, my gosh. 00:03:38 - Chrisanthi Voukatidis Yeah. And the goal was to get me to the hospital alive. They said, just get her here alive. Well, I got there alive. They didn't expect that I would ever walk again. They expected that I would be paraplegic the rest of my life and have all the challenges that came with that. And I ended up staying in the hospital for all of 2018. The accident happened in April of 2018, early April, and I ended up coming home the end of November of 2018. And when I came home, I came home to a new home because my family moved me and set me up in an apartment that was close to them because I needed around the clock care. And I did come home in a hospital bed with bags all attached to my body without the prospect of leaving that bed. And had I left that bed, I would have left that bed into a wheelchair. I had lost my hair. I had lost all the weight I had on my body. I had looked pretty much like anorexic on the verge of death. It was pretty horrific, really horrific and excruciating pain that I would cry night and day, day and night. So that had been wow, right? Tremendous surprise. And that's what I have been dealing with the last five years, since 2018. Up until now, I have proved the doctors wrong. I do stand. I do walk. I'm not going to say I walk because I used to walk, okay? I used to really like to walk in stride. Now I hobble along with a lot of moaning and groaning. I hobble, but it's a start. It's a start. Gloria Grace Rand Yeah. Chrisanthi Voukatidis So I just had to come to terms with a whole new way, a whole new reality, a whole new reality, a whole new me. I had pretty much, at that point, lost everything that I thought was important to me. Previously, I lost my home, my marriage, all those things that I thought I had gotten over. And then like that, I lost my strength and almost my will to survive. I really did not want to survive. I survived for the love of my family. And also, I felt like it was disrespectful to God to even wish to not be alive, because I felt that by the grace of God, I was kept alive. So I felt guilty for wanting wishing death, although I did, because the pain was almost unbearable, and the fear for the future was tremendous as well, because I thought, how am I going to go on now? So it has been a very tumultuous five years. I have learned a tremendous amount. It's like I'm a whole different person, really. 00:07:25 - Gloria Grace Rand Well, I can imagine well, I can't exactly imagine the pain that you're going through, but certainly the transformation that you've had to go through. I mean, the fact that you have been able to be able to at least stand and as you say hobble a little bit. So was there anything in particular other than maybe your sheer will that enabled you to defy these doctors’ predictions early on that got you out of the bed, out of the chair, and to be able to do that? 00:07:58 - Chrisanthi Voukatidis Yes, I believe so. I believe 100% in the power of prayer. I had so many people praying for me around the clock, praying for me. I prayed night and day. My mother prayed with me, her whole congregation, people I didn't even know prayed for me. And also, I think that was the grace of God. And I figured if I should have died in that fall, the doctors couldn't believe I survived it, so I should have died. I didn't die. So I figured, why didn't I die? I mean, some people die, they fall two steps off a ladder and you can die. So I was like, wow. So I trusted. I just trusted in God that there was a reason for it all. Who am I to know? So it was prayer, it was will, it was night and day, meditation, visualization, all the things I have learned throughout my years of massage therapy and the miracle of the human body, the human body. I am amazed at our body. We are miraculously and fearfully made, right? Gloria Grace Rand Yes. Chrisanthi Voukatidis We are. And I clung to that. I really clung to that. And in my prayers, in my visualization, I would imagine, I would visualize the nerves shooting, I would visualize the blood flowing, I would visualize what was happening internally and call on the intelligence of God to do what was necessary to get me going, to get me going. And I believe in all of that. I mean, I believed it through massage therapy that our thoughts create our wellness, our illness, our intention matters. It all matters, I think. 00:10:34 - Gloria Grace Rand Yeah, absolutely. 00:10:36 - Chrisanthi Voukatidis So it was those things. And I'm really, really thankful that I did have that background in massage therapy because it gave me a better understanding of our anatomy. And I also had a very spiritual connection, very close relationship with our creator, and a tremendous love for my family that without them, I wouldn't have survived. No way. No way. They didn't leave my side. Not one day. Not one day. They didn't leave my side. And they worked my body, they lifted my legs, they moved my arms, because I couldn't do anything. So they did for my body what I couldn't do. And it was so sweet. My sister, as she would lift my legs,...