Show Transcript:
Invisible Stories Episode 2 with Iman Gatti
On today’s episode I speak to Iman Gatti, author of Cracked Open – Never Broken.
Iman is an empowerment trainer, a transformational speaker, an author and Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®. She helps people go from feeling unfulfilled to living life with joy, self-love and confidence.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode, along the lines of key questions such as—
- How do we make sense of what seems meaningless, and why we must for survival
- Can I be safely seen?
- How do we find perspective amidst a traumatic story?
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Cracked Open – Never Broken by Iman Gatti
When she was six-years-old, Iman Gatti witnessed a tragedy that began a journey in which her childhood and culture were stripped away from her – only to be replaced by a decade of abuse and neglect at the hands of those appointed to protect her.
Yet in this darkness, Iman held on to the light within her. A light her mother taught her was far too bright to ever be extinguished.
Cracked Open – Never Broken is for anyone who refuses to succumb to the role of the victim, and instead chooses to live with an unbreakable spirit and overflowing compassion. Through sheer determination, strength and resilience, Iman overcomes the unimaginable. She is proof that, when faced with extreme suffering, the power of the human spirit can endure and transcend.
She takes readers on a journey through a childhood of loss, heartbreak and isolation as she clings to the hope of a life that she has always dreamed of.
Iman believes we all possess the power of forgiveness and that we can transform our trauma into triumph.
Key Takeaways
- Timestamp: 4:35: “I always felt invisible. I felt like people weren’t seeing me, they were just seeing the title, they were just seeing the headline, they were just seeing the pictures and they wanted to know more only to satisfy their curiosity as opposed to coming from empathy or compassion”
- Timestamp: 6:02: “I think it makes it easier for me to heal if I can help other people too.”
- Timestamp: 7:46: “At first, you don’t want to talk about anything. You just want to be invisible. […] And then, when I wanted to share, I was afraid. Even though you are in charge of the writing, I just kept forgetting and I had to remind myself that I was allowed to share or not as I saw fit or not. There’s a lot of empowerment in that. Creating those boundaries of what you want to share and the stories you choose to share really helped me, because as a speaker people will get fixated on the entertainment piece. So they would stop hearing the lesson or the lecture or the workshop I was trying to deliver, and just want to talk about the juicy goodness of “Holy Moly, this is a soap opera!”
- Timestamp: 10:40: “The book always calls to you, as you know. And so the book was whispering to me like, “ok, we’re going to do this someday” And so when I wanted to become a speaker and start life coaching and helping other people, it became so obvious that if I didn’t have this book, there would be nothing else. I truly did not want to share this story, really and truly I would have preferred not to. And so it was the price, almost like the toll that you have to pay, for your dreams.”
- Timestamp: 11:32: “Anytime you ask someone to give a piece of themselves, you gotta give something up first. I can’t ask my clients to come and reveal themselves to me and hold me in this sacred relationship if I am over here not sharing anything and being closed off.”
- Timestamp: 14.58: “When am I allowed to not be invisible? Why do I have to take this burden on? Why is that an expectation of the people who are traumatized? Why so I have to be the one who suffers in silence and heals in silence?”
- Timestamp: 28:35: “Somebody lost that match, but hopefully they stood up again and they got out of the ring. And we are so proud of them, still. We are so proud that they got up, and they had the courage to fight. And they survived whatever came at them. And that is us. And so instead I like to think of myself like that. I am a warrior. Sometimes I win, and a lot of times I lose. But I wouldn’t be able to win if I didn’t let myself lose.”
