WIFE · MOTHER · TRAUMA COACH
I’m Audye…
…and this is the long version.
I didn’t come to this work through a planned career path… I came to it through two decades of doing everything right and still not being “enough”.
ONE
What I inherited
The wounds weren’t new; they were generational. I’d dealt with emotional neglect and abandonment and no sense of self-worth from pain that everybody in the room could feel, and nobody was allowed to name. Most of it was handed down like furniture.
I learned early that being easy to have around was the safest thing a girl could be, and I got very good at it. By the time I was an adult, I couldn’t tell you what I wanted for dinner without reading the entire room first.
TWO
What motherhood cracked open
My first birth was intensely traumatic, and my second was an accidental freebirth at home after laboring for only 30 minutes (this was one of the most unexpectedly empowering experiences).
Within weeks after my first birth, I was experiencing postpartum depression and DMER on top of my PCOS and Hashimoto’s, which was then stacked on childhood CPTSD I had just been diagnosed with.
I was exhausted in every way a person can be exhausted, mentally, physically, spiritually, and I kept showing up like nothing was wrong, because performing fine was the only real skill I had. Until it stopped working, and I hit rock bottom.
But what we often don’t realize is that you can love your life and still feel yourself spiraling downward inside it. And because you love it so deeply, you convince yourself to keep quiet about your reality.
THREE
What I stopped pretending about
I survived narcissistic abuse as a child, and I don’t water down that story anymore, because diluting it is how I stayed in it as long as I did.
But here’s what took me years to see: the type of abuse isn’t the universal part. What it left behind is. The women who find me have wildly different origin stories and almost identical habits.
I spent years trying to heal inside the same dynamics that hurt me, taking advice from people who were still in it, getting further from my own voice every year, and I called that progress even though my body never felt it.
FOUR
What actually changed
I could narrate my own behavior in real time while I was still doing it, and when I realized that, I knew I had to stop asking the wrong people for help.
What changed was getting a coach who saw me, and learning actual tools and practicing them imperfectly until they finally worked.
I stopped waiting to feel better before I acted differently; I just started doing it (with a ton of support from coaches and my trusted circle) and eventually the feeling caught up.
Saying goodbye to the relationships that deliberately kept me in that pattern was incredibly difficult, but once I was able to create a foundation based on God’s truth, love, and skills He wanted me to have… My life became unrecognizable in the best way.
You can know everything, but nothing changes until you do it.
Audye Gonzalez
WHERE I AM NOW
I built the thing I needed.
I coach high-functioning, faith-driven women who are capable on paper but feel hollow on the inside. These women who love their lives and are grieving their disappearance inside them. Women who believe they’re ungrateful, but they’re really mourning a life they deserve to have that is literally passing them by.
I’m not a therapist, I don’t diagnose, and I don’t treat. I work in the present, on what’s still running today, and I teach women to catch it mid-motion and choose something else.
What a trauma coach actually does
I’m not only a coach…
I share recipes made with real food, because healing your mind only works if you’re also healing your body, and that starts in the kitchen. I write about homemaking, marriage, faith, and what it actually looks like to build a life by hand with two small kids. I occasionally record a podcast while the baby sleeps, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds.
I’d rather show you the whole thing than a curated slice of it.
Fun things about me
COFFEE ORDER
Black, or a triple cappuccino with oat milk
FAVORITE SEASON
Fall, obviously!
ALWAYS IN MY BAG
Baby wipes and lip balm
CURRENT OBSESSION
Dry French wine
ON MY BUCKET LIST
Start a garden
GUILTY PLEASURE
“Reality meditation,” iykyk
COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT
Jesus, journaling, and music
DREAM DINNER GUEST
Nancy Drew, I have questions
New around here?
Start with the workbook
If you already know you’re stuck and you want the fastest way to see the pattern, this is it.
Read my blog
Coaching, motherhood, marriage, and the occasional thing I’m probably oversharing about.
Eat good food
Real food for living in reality. No twelve-step sourdough, I promise.
If any part of my story sounds like yours…
You’re in good company. Let’s get started!
