This Episode Appears in Our 'Best Of' Lists:
Host Kelly Berry sits down with Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci - bestselling author, writing coach, and holistic-health professor - to unpack healing from trauma. From somatic practices to the power of creativity, Dr. Gabby explains why real emotional healing starts in the body, how authentic living rewires the nervous system, and why writing can transform pain into purpose. Expect an honest, hope-filled guide to trauma recovery, mind-body connection, and living with intention.
Trauma isn’t “all in your head.” Dr. Gabby breaks down how the nervous system stores painful experiences and why symptoms like anxiety or chronic pain are the body’s smoke alarm. She shares practical somatic tools - breath work, yoga, and seasonal “emotional detoxes” - that help the body metabolize stress instead of freezing in it. The Body Keeps the Score gets a name-check for good reason: biology tells the true story.
“Pretending everything’s fine closes the door on help.” Dr. Gabby explains how wearing the “I’m fine” mask drains energy and blocks recovery. When we drop perfectionism and let trusted people witness our story, we create space for compassion and co-regulation - the fastest route to feeling as good as life looks.
Western medicine often splits psychology from physiology; holistic health knits them together. Dr. Gabby describes trauma as energetic congestion that becomes cumulative disease if left unchecked. She maps out an integrated care plan - somatic therapy, acupuncture, plant medicine - that treats root causes instead of masking symptoms.
Writing her memoirs showed Dr. Gabby the missing link: creativity is medicine. Crafting narrative let her see patterns, release shame, and invite community support. She now hosts intimate writing retreats where journaling, nature walks, and mindful meals turn storytelling into somatic repair.
Not sure where to begin? Start small, start embodied. Dr. Gabby suggests a daily “sense check” (breath, heartbeat, muscle tension) followed by ten minutes of free-writing. These micro-rituals build self-awareness, making deeper trauma work feel less like a cliff dive and more like steady spring cleaning.
“You can't self help your way out of trauma.” — Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci
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“The body is brilliant. It's the most miraculous, intuitive, intelligent thing on the planet.” — Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci
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“We freeze and then we never really process or digest that frozen part of us.” — Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci
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“I don't believe that humans heal in a vacuum.” — Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci
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“Creativity is medicine, writing is medicine.” — Dr. Gabrielle Pelicci
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00:00 Introduction to Life Intended and self-leadership in healing
02:27 The illusion of perfection and its cost to emotional health
05:14 Healing from trauma vs. hiding behind "I'm fine"
08:01 Authentic living as the foundation for trauma recovery
10:53 Understanding trauma through the holistic health lens
13:26 How the body stores trauma and supports healing
16:01 Why trauma is cumulative and often unconscious
19:04 Big T vs. Little T trauma and how both affect the nervous system
21:36 Processing emotions: the missing link in mental and emotional health
25:52 The massive gap in trauma-informed holistic health care
30:30 Emotional detox: Seasonal practices for somatic healing
33:49 Dr. Gabby’s personal journey of healing from trauma
39:20 Creativity as medicine: Writing and nature as tools for recovery
48:29 Why thinking creatively leads to authentic living
50:11 The mission of Life Intended: Healing, intention, and wholeness
Kelly Berry (01:04)
Today I have Dr. Gabby, Gabby Pelicci PhD. She is a bestselling author, writing coach, and professor of holistic health and integrative medicine. Her debut memoir, All This Healing Is Killing Me, became a number one Amazon bestseller, and her second book, The Last Ceremony, explores themes of trauma, transformation, and spiritual awakening.
through the lens of plant For those of you just listening on audio, she's holding them up. She has them both here and they'll both be linked in the show notes too. With a PhD in transformative studies and over 20 years of teaching experience, Dr. Gabby guides aspiring authors to tell their stories through her private writing retreats in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her work blends science, soul and storytelling to help others turn pain into purpose on the page.
Named one of the top 100 women of the future in 2022. She has been featured in MSNBC, spirituality and health, and spoken at major events like South by Southwest and TEDx this year. I'm sure we'll talk more about that and learn more about her work at gabriellepolici.com. Welcome, Gabby. That was a long list. We have done a lot and it's a lot of really, really, really cool stuff. So I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. Welcome.
Gabrielle Pelicci (02:25)
You did so good! You have such like a news anchor personality.
Kelly Berry (02:28)
thanks.
Not my first time. And yeah, yeah,
I love it. So I think it yeah, I love it.
Gabrielle Pelicci (02:37)
My favorite thing
you said was, feel as good as it looks. I did like a blog thing this morning about this, about like everything looks really curated. And until you kind of pull back the curtain, you don't know if the people really feel as good as they look. I'm one of those people, like swear on my books, I feel as good as I look, but that's not always the case. And it's really hard to navigate that.
Kelly Berry (02:41)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (03:02)
like especially when you're seeking friendships or mentors or communities or things like that. I really liked that phrase that you said.
Kelly Berry (03:09)
Yeah, well, thank you. That's one of, as Sadie and I have been working on, like the rebrand and really like what life intended is all about. That is the core because what you just said is so true. You don't really know what you're going to get. You don't really know how people are representing themselves. And because of that, it puts you in this place where you feel like everything that you see is what it is. And that's not the case. You know, there's a lot of women that are really, really struggling.
There's a lot of women that really have lost themselves that don't know where to go, what to But they're very good at putting up a front at appearing as if everything is OK. so our work is all designed to reconnect that disconnect and help them figure out, you know, if I want my life to look like this, how do I make it?
feel like that too. So I'm glad that resonated with you because that's our goal and you're an expert at this.
Gabrielle Pelicci (04:03)
Yeah.
I do consider myself an expert in this. I'm not good at a lot of things, but this I am really, really good at. And I like how you reemphasize that what you see is not always what you get. And I think that women and humans in general are doing themselves a real disservice when they pretend that it's good and it's not that good because you're literally closing that door for people to help you, for people to see you, people to
Kelly Berry (04:09)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (04:35)
for you, for like, for you alleviate the struggle and the suffering, you're doing yourself such a disservice when you, you know, when you have, when you have on the mask and you have the facade and you have the representative. and I know that we're conditioned to do that. I know that it's not something we just like wake up and decide, but it's the breakdown of that, that really gives us.
the most healing and the most freedom. And it's counterintuitive. It feels like jumping off a cliff, you know, to like let all that out in the world.
Kelly Berry (05:06)
Yeah.
Yeah, I am a recovering. I'm fine responder, you know, like, how are you? I'm fine. You know, when when I was anything, but and there was just like this is a combination of just didn't really know how to be vulnerable, didn't really want to be vulnerable. And,
Gabrielle Pelicci (05:14)
Hahaha!
I should.
Kelly Berry (05:30)
held it together for a really long time until I really, really wasn't fine. And then it was like, now what do I do? So so many directions I want to take this, but I think the first would I want to connect this to the title of your first book, because isn't that like exactly what we're talking about? All this healing killing me. Yeah. Where did that come from?
Gabrielle Pelicci (05:51)
I was like you!
I wasn't an I'm fine. I was an I'm perfect. Like I was like, you know, I was in such denial of like what was actually going on. I was in hiding. I had all the secrets. I deeply believe that if people knew who I actually was, I would be.
Kelly Berry (05:57)
Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (06:12)
cast out of the Garden of Life and like I would just be wandering the planet. Like I was so misinformed and confused and yet I think the call and the pull towards healing is stronger than all of that. I think it's stronger than all of that. And I think like it's just, it is the natural intelligence of being human, of consciousness, of aliveness.
to be moving towards wholeness and moving towards healing. And that was very much alive in me while the ego part of me was like, no, no, no, don't show emotion, don't do anything. And then, so in this first book, All This Healing Is Killing Me, I wrote down everything I didn't want anyone to know about me, because I was just like dripping in shame. I was convinced that like people would just be like, you're terrible, or you're what?
And so I just did it anyway, because the pull to wholeness was stronger than the fear. And I did it. And what a relief, Kelly. What a relief. It's such a relief. People were like, you're amazing. I love you. You're so strong. You're a survivor. You're inspirational. And I was like, And it wasn't so much about the validation of being someone other than I thought that I was, as much as it was that I was like, all this stuff was lies.
This was all lies. Like, keep the secrets, pretend to be someone else. Like, you're the only one that ever had this feeling or this experience. Like, it was all lies. So I just got to get all of that out of the way, you know? And so then I could just really be creative or really have fun or really be authentic. And I wasn't trying so hard all the time to like adjust and adapt and, you know what I mean? Like fit myself in situations.
Kelly Berry (08:01)
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that that's probably something that like people are really unaware of is all of the energy that it takes from us our past, you know, whatever it is, either from your past or from your present or the shame that you feel, you know, it takes a lot of energy to like contort and change to fit the situation.
just because you think that's the only way that people are gonna accept you or, you know, for whatever millions of reasons there are, it is draining to be anything other than authentic. And so I think, you know, you just spoke to that, like how freeing it felt. But I think that's probably something that just a lot of people aren't taking into consideration when they
you know, I guess to go along with the title of your book, choosing the easy way, which is not opening the lid, not going inside, not seeing what's there because a lot of people are just really afraid of what they're going to find because the healing journey is a hard one.
Gabrielle Pelicci (09:08)
Yeah, it's really hard. It's hard because we set ourselves up for it being hard. I don't know what it was like 100 years ago or a thousand years ago or whatever, but I know that now in the 21st century, going down the healing path, it's a warrior's path. It requires like an incredible amount of strength to confront all your own traumas and difficulties and insecurities and fears and things.
And I also felt very strongly. The second book I wrote, The Last Ceremony, was about my plant medicine journeys. And in one of my journeys, the plants told me like, you have to feel all the feelings of the women that came before you. And so there is also this, there's also this theory that trauma can be generational or we can be carrying stuff in our bodies and our consciousness of others. So I don't claim to know like how the whole thing works, but I do know that
if you embark on this journey, it's gonna kill you and resurrect you many times over. What I've done is I've gotten in the practice of that as a practice. Like every time I get on the yoga mat or every time I do my meditation, I let the drama die and I let something better come forth. I'm like always in this cycle of rebirth and reinvention.
And so I've kind of gotten in the rhythm of this because nature is in the rhythm of this. have winter, spring, summer, fall. It is not strange to nature that the thing dies and something new is born. That's the nature of things. And we have the moon cycles that are happening every 28 days. And so I've tried to get in sync with that so that it's not as bumpy. It's still a practice, but I can say I don't suffer the way that I used to when I started all of this.
Kelly Berry (10:53)
yeah, thanks for all of that. So one of the things I met Gabby probably about a month ago now, I will say, and I walked into a coffee that some women, like local women were having. sat down, was pretty late, but I sat down and there was already a conversation going on. literally the first thing that I hear in this conversation is Gabby says,
you can't self help your way out of trauma. And so I'm like, I don't know what they're talking about, but that sounds interesting to talk more about that. And so, you know, the conversation evolved kind of to what we're seeing. And it was kind of like a group of coaches and people kind of in this space. But what we're seeing is all of this information overload. There are podcasts like this one. There are podcasts like lots of them. There are a million books. There's YouTube videos. There's
your friend who read a book who wants to talk about something, but there's so many places to get information. So I started talking about like the difference between a learning journey and a healing journey. And so that I think is a really interesting topic. So I would like for you to, to tell us what that means and what, the good parts of that and what are like, kind of like maybe even the dangerous parts of that.
Gabrielle Pelicci (12:09)
Yeah. I mean, let's remind your listeners right now that they have a body. Like right now in this moment, like just be reminded right now in this moment, there's breath coming in and out of your body. It's going to happen about 25,000 times today. Your heart is beating. Your blood is circulating. Just like you have a body, you're in a body and everything that's ever happened to you is stored in your body. It's your nervous system is like,
It's like a network. don't know if you've ever seen a photo of it, but it looks like the roots when you pull out like weeds out of the ground and it's in every single cell of your whole body and that information system, it stores all the things that happen to you. And at some point somewhere we were like so infatuated with our mind and with learning and with everything that we thought we could just like think or talk or talk or think our way through things.
And we got disconnected from the somatic experience, the physical experience. But that's where everything is. And so we have this very bizarre fascination with learning our way out of situations. And I'm someone who's way over-educated. I have a PhD in 100 certifications and things. So obviously, I like learning as well. But none of that helped me with panic attacks or with nightmares or with
menstrual cramps or what like it just doesn't help. You can read all the books about menstrual cramps you want. They're not going to make your menstrual cramps go away. Like that's not it's not helpful. It's good for a framework. It's good for an understanding. It's very limited. And when I meet people who are like, did you read this book? Did you hear this podcast? Whatever I say to them, what are your symptoms? What is it that you are trying to which is what I said to our mutual friend? What are you trying to solve? Why are you reading this book?
And initially it's kind of like, well, what do you mean? Well, you picked up the book for a reason. It's about manifestation or neuroscience. What are you trying to manifest? Well, I want this thing to be successful. Why? because something. And once you kind of get into, actually I'm really scared about my mortality. I've hit midlife and I don't know what's going to happen. OK, well, my dad died when I was like,
15, okay, well now we're getting somewhere. Now we're getting somewhere. Now you're getting to the age approximately that your dad was, that's stored in your body. All this tension is coming up around it. You're having like restricted breathing. Your stomach is tight. Your skin is hot. You're feeling sweaty. That's a physical experience. Then you need to deal with that. That's a physical thing. Yoga, breath work, body work, anything that.
targets the autonomic nervous system. There's different like chiropractic and structural things that you can do, acupuncture, whatever, plant medicine, because now you're actually doing restoration on the places where it's stored. It doesn't mean don't read the books, but like don't pretend that reading the books is the silver bullet. Like that's, it's good to be informed, but you actually have to get in and do trauma healing.
if there's something there that's causing physical symptoms in your body.
Kelly Berry (15:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
love all of that. And I think that am somebody who, before I even realized it, I've always had a lot of physical I tell this story a lot to people. I don't know if I've ever told it on the podcast, but when I was in graduate school getting my MBA,
you know, then this is not to sound like any way, but it, I, I tell it because I think it is the first time in my life where I felt like I was in a room of people who were smarter than me and I wasn't equipped to handle it. And so I developed this physical response that anytime I was speaking in front of a crowd, my face turned bright red, like a tomato. And that carried with me for, you know, 15 plus years. And it's a very like physical response. And I didn't know.
what was going on and how that felt. And, you know, it would happen no matter if I was like leading a meeting at work or on a zoom call or, you know, speaking in front of a crowd, I would just turn this bright red. And, you know, I'm like, I don't know what to do about this. But I think that if we think about all of the times that we feel anxious or, you know, we have negative self-talk or something, there is always some kind of physical symptom.
that accompanies that. And a lot of times we feel it physically before we understand it mentally, even if that time between like the feeling and knowing is microseconds, you know? And I think, to speak to how important the somatic part is, our bodies are telling us these things before our brains even realize it.
Gabrielle Pelicci (16:53)
Yeah, the body is brilliant. It's the most miraculous, intuitive, intelligent thing on the planet. Like our bodies are unbelievable. They're just unbelievably sensitive and smart in their own way. Like you said, before you even have thought, before there's even like thought, there's sensation. And one of the shifts that you make once you kind of get a little bit further down the road on this journey,
Kelly Berry (16:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Gabrielle Pelicci (17:21)
is going, thank you, anxiety. Thank you. Thank you. OK. There's something in the environment that isn't quite right, or there's something that's stored in my hard drive that isn't quite right. Thank you, anxiety. All right. Let's see what's going on. In the same way that when the smoke alarm goes off in your house, you're not like, what the hell? OK, if it went off because you made the bacon and whatever, got smoky. But if it's legit going off, you're grateful that it went off. When the gas light comes on and says,
Kelly Berry (17:48)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (17:51)
you're running out of gas, you're grateful, because then you got to put more gas in the car. And we also have done this very weird thing where we're like, emotions. What do you mean? That's like a whole data set. That's like a whole lot of data that you have that's available to you about someone crossing your boundary or about
you know, something you're afraid of happening, but maybe it's like legit something you should be afraid of happening. And we've gotten into a very messy dysfunctional relationship with our emotions, which is what anxiety is. It's a fear of something happening in the future. And like you said, tapping into the body, it gives us wisdom. That's what it's there for.
Kelly Berry (18:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there. I want to take a step back, though, because I mentioned that first statement that you said. You can't self-help your way out of trauma. So I would like you, as someone who's an expert in trauma, to give us kind of like, is the definition of trauma? What's the difference in big T trauma, little T trauma? I think a lot of people are talking about it.
now and I think it's important to really talk about what it is.
Gabrielle Pelicci (18:59)
Yeah. Well, there's what everybody says it is, and then there's what Dr. Gabby says it is. So I'll start with what everybody says it is. So everybody says trauma is some disruptive event that's happened to you. Little trauma could be potty training or failing a test in school. Big trauma could be any of the, are you familiar with the adverse childhood experiences, like divorce or?
Kelly Berry (19:05)
Okay.
I am,
but if you could go over those, think that would be helpful.
Gabrielle Pelicci (19:27)
Yeah,
you can Google it, but there's the big things that happen to you when you're young, like your parents getting divorced, or parent dying, or violence in the homes, or things like that, that set up your nervous system and your biology in a certain way to be more susceptible to illness, more susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder, and things like that. And so they consider it to be a psychological disruption.
you had an experience of not being safe and that kind of stays with you. And then it kind of attracts other situations in the future. And you perpetuate this feeling of not being safe. That's a very, you know, kind of rudimentary mainstream explanation of trauma. Some of it I agree with, some of it I don't. The fact that it sits so much in psychology and not biology, kind of irks me a little bit. There are some...
scholars like Body Keeps the Score and stuff, which I think we talked about at our meeting, that are grounding trauma more in the physical experience and looking at how it's stored in the body. That's not actually not like the widespread main theory. Like a lot of it's kind of still sitting in the head part. Me, I take it like even a step further. So my first
Kelly Berry (20:34)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (20:40)
level of training in the world of healing arts. have a PhD in holistic health and integrative medicine. Way, way, way, way back when I was 19, my first level of training was in something called energy medicine. I trained with a bunch of nurses in the healing touch tradition, which is like a hands-on healing where you work with the energy field of the body. Also still not totally mainstream accepted. But what I learned from a very young age was that
Emotion is not only like a thought and a feeling, but it's also like an energetic experience, meaning there's like an energy congestion. So my personal experience of trauma is kind of like, like a congestion of energy. Something happens to us and we freeze and that energy becomes undigested. It's normal for things to happen, but then we should metabolize and digest them and keep going. And you'll see this with animals, like an animal's being chased.
And then there's a book that's called, like, Why Zebras Don't Have Stress or something like that. Anyway, I'd have to look it up. But they shake, which is also part of a tradition of yoga. And they shake off that experience. And they go on with their day. They keep moving. We freeze. And then we never really process or digest that frozen
part of us. So for me, it's not just about psychology. It's not just about biology, but there's actually a metabolism that has to happen there. I haven't heard other people talk about it in this way, but it's my experience. And I can feel it when I'm doing my yoga or my plant medicine or working with my traumatic experiences. I can actually feel how that energy starts to dissipate, or I could feel it move through my body and leave my body, whether it's through
tears or big breath or sweating or even purging. There's a lot of purging in plant medicine. So that's the kind of general experience for me. The other thing is that the more you, if you think about anything that's congested in your house, maybe the pipes in your house or the gutters around your house, if you think of any area that's really congested, it's cumulative, right?
So like there's some hair in the drain and then there's some more hair in the drain and then there's some more and then you're calling the plumber and you're spending 500 bucks for him to snake the drain, right? So these areas of congestion, these areas of disturbance, they're also cumulative, which I think kind of, if you're not really familiar with the whole genre of trauma, you might think like, it happened and it's over. You might think of it as like,
something like, you know, in the kind of movie of your life and that's actually not true. These are cumulative. So they start to like grow and accumulate, which is why a lot of times by the time you get to your forties and you're having your midlife crisis, a lot of it is just like, well, you got a lot of undigested. You're full. The toilet is backing up. The septic is backing up into the yard.
Kelly Berry (23:43)
Like you're full, you're the glass is not way full.
Gabrielle Pelicci (23:52)
We need to drain the septic people. It's backing up. But I don't think your average human is like, I'm all backed up with trauma. Look at me. It's like, it happened or something. So we're still kind of catching up with our understanding of it. I think we should be like every quarter, every year at the least, cleaning out all this shit, like cleaning out all this stuff. Like, who do you have resentments against?
Kelly Berry (24:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (24:19)
Where are you not forgiving yourself? You know, what things when you think of them give you that sick feeling to your stomach or that feel like any of that clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean it up, clean it up, clean it up. I have to do that pretty regularly because I like accumulate stuff really easily, but you should be doing it at least annually.
Kelly Berry (24:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it makes so much sense when you think about, you know, there's just several things you said just in this conversation that it's cumulative, that we have this relationship with emotion where we suppress it. And if you think about like, if you just suppress and suppress and suppress and suppress all of these emotions and never fully process them or let them pass through you, then it just makes sense that all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're bubbling over, you know, like you're just
And however that manifests for you, I'm sure it manifests for a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but that's when you hear about people just having an absolute breakdown. They just can't manage it anymore. So when you talk about...
Gabrielle Pelicci (25:25)
think that's also a sad place though because
if you're only trusting Western medicine, then you don't even see the dots connecting with this. You don't even see, I haven't dealt with my relationship with my dad and now I have heart disease. You don't even make any connection between a manifestation of cancer, of diabetes, of chronic back pain, of fibromyalgia. You don't even make any connection.
between all this shit that's not cleaned up and then all this other stuff that's now coming online for you. An autoimmune disorder, what like, because only in the realm of holistic and integrative medicine, which has its roots actually in medicine that's thousands of years old, like that's what did my dissertation research about, which is a topic for another conversation. But like your regular doctor is not gonna like, you're just gonna get like meds.
Kelly Berry (25:57)
Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (26:21)
Do you know what I mean? Like your regular average doctor is not going to tell you that these things are connected.
Kelly Berry (26:28)
Yeah, yeah. So a million percent. And that makes me think of another conversation that we had about like, what is the real need right now? Because there are a lot of people who are feeling a bunch of different ways, you know, like maybe it spans everything from like, they have had really bad trauma that they've never really like addressed.
all the way to just like somebody who's kind of lived a normal life, but life, no matter what, it's just stressful. But they don't have anybody to go to that can like assess them and say, this is what's going on. This is where you need to go. Like their yoga instructor can't do that. Their doctor can't do that. Even their therapist can't do that. So what do you see is this like giant gap in
Gabrielle Pelicci (27:21)
It's a giant
ass gap. It's a grand canyon ass gap.
Kelly Berry (27:23)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So tell us about what that is and what you see.
Gabrielle Pelicci (27:28)
I don't even know. I don't even
know. Well, I mean, to me, it was a scavenger hunt. Took me 25 years, right? It was a scavenger hunt. It was like following breadcrumbs, right? Like, do you know anybody that can help with this? Like reading the book, taking the workshop, you know, and we talked about this with Sadie, like Sadie's taking her like somatic training and like you're doing your stuff, right? Like to me, it was a scavenger hunt. Now, luckily, I have like a massive network of
providers, practitioners, healers, whatever, that are like my trusted board of directors of my personal health and wellbeing, that I know like, okay, these are my people. And we're all on the same page. We all agree, right? We all agree on this paradigm that everything's connected. We all agree that, you know, trauma is what trauma is and these are the things that will help it. And these are the things that will make it worse, right? Like we're all in agreement.
We're like a community, right? And there is a community. It's just not on like community.com or something where you're like, okay, like here are the people that think this way and I can just like easily top in and get what I need. It's, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that. I mean, one of it is that least 90 % of the treatments that I've done in the last 25 years were not covered by insurance. I had to pay out of pocket.
They weren't even necessarily recognized by the medical community as valid forms of healing all the way up until writing my books. My whole platform now is that creativity is medicine, writing is medicine. I'm not going to get a doctor to agree with me about that unless it's some weird transpersonal doctor that lives in Northern California or something. The whole thing is problematic because
It's also really difficult to monetize all the things that I've done. I I have paid for them, but once you have this skillset of movement, of breath, of meditation, like, once you have this skillset, the creativity, the support system, you're not like spending thousands and thousands of dollars, right? On medical visits and medications and health management and illness management. like, just, you become, you become sovereign.
in a different way, you have a different kind of agency and that's not the way the system is set up. We're not supposed to do that. That's like getting out of the matrix. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to stay in the matrix. And so there's like, there's just like a lot of challenges. If someone knows someone like you or someone like me, we can probably put them on the right path. We can have the conversations or maybe they find it in a book or a podcast. But it's a problematic gap.
For sure. For sure.
Kelly Berry (30:08)
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so we were talking about some things and then we kind of went down a different path and I don't want to lose them. So back to like the, we'll call it spring cleaning, like the annual cleaning, the quarterly cleaning of all of this, just the buildup. What are the things that either you do or you recommend people do to do that cleaning?
Gabrielle Pelicci (30:31)
Yeah, all the things. Meditation, mindfulness, yoga, movement, breath work, saunas, cold plunge, acupuncture, changing my diet, detoxing, fasting, sleeping more, more time in nature, writing, creativity, journaling, dancing, conversations, support groups, therapy, mentorship. I mean, just like...
Kelly Berry (30:33)
I love it.
Gabrielle Pelicci (30:57)
So many things, herbs. I have a whole drawer next to my bedside table. It has kava, it has passion flower, it has holy basil, it has valerian. I have all my like kitchen herbs, know, organic honey, ginger tea, echinacea for when I'm like, I mean just like a lifetime, a lifetime of practices and medicines.
that are non-pharmaceutical, like just a whole massive library, mindset practices, retreats, travel. I mean, just it goes on and on and on and on, not to mention like the hundreds of different healers that have had their hands on me. Like, and I'm someone who's traveled to 50 countries. I've lived in half a dozen countries. I've lived in half the states in the US. I've lived in...
Guatemala, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Tel Aviv. There is no rock unturned. If there is a rock with something under the rock that can help you, I have found the rock and I have turned it over. It has been my lifelong passion and quest to find these things. And I feel like the type of person who has come
Kelly Berry (31:55)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (32:14)
and confident in meeting another human, hearing what's going on and saying, okay, I think this is your path forward. I feel very confident in being able to offer that to others because I've tried all the things and I've also learned there's something called contraindications in medical language, which means not all medicine is good for all people. So, you know, if you have
thyroid problem, you're not going to do ketamine therapy or like, there's just like these things where these two things don't go together, you're not supposed to do them together. But you have to be trained and educated about what that is. Like you have to know what conditions are appropriate for what medicines in general, in general, you're in really safe territory with meditation, yoga.
Kelly Berry (33:06)
Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (33:07)
breathwork, but even so, like I knew a lady that had broken her back and yoga was a terrible idea and every time she did it, she was like in pain for months. So like, even that, even that, you need to be mindful and you need to listen to your body. But you would not believe how much is available to you. You wouldn't believe it. There's so much that's available to you.
Kelly Berry (33:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's with all of that that's available. It's just really heartbreaking that the path that most people take is to the doctor, to the pharmacy, you know. And that's that's just really unfortunate. And, know, it's part of I know it's your mission. It's part of my mission to make people aware of other other ways. And
Gabrielle Pelicci (33:26)
You know?
Kelly Berry (33:49)
to your point and you brought up the body keeps the score. And I know we've talked about like somatic practices and you've also mentioned like you feel like you have healed from your trauma. And so talk a little bit about like what that feels like, know, knowing what it felt like to have trauma and now what it feels like to kind of be completely healed.
Gabrielle Pelicci (34:07)
you
I mean, did you ever have the experience where like something shitty was happening for a while, like maybe you were getting migraines or maybe like you twisted your ankle and now every time you step on your foot, it your ankle. Like, you ever have that experience and then you wake up one day and it's gone and you're like, wait a minute, my ankle used to hurt. Like, my ankle doesn't hurt today. And you're like, holy shit. And then you're kind of like, look at me, right? Did that ever happen to you with like some physical symptoms? It's like exactly the same feeling.
Kelly Berry (34:38)
yeah, yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (34:42)
where there was this purging and purging and purging and healing and healing and purging. And then one day I woke up and I was like, I don't have anxiety. I was like, this is what other people feel like. I could go places and I wasn't sweaty. I wasn't looking for the exit. wasn't like, I was like, it was just like I could walk on that foot again, right?
Kelly Berry (35:10)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (35:11)
I was just, I felt like this is what it feels like to be normal. That was just like, this is how it's supposed to be. Like this feels like wellbeing. This feels like health. It just felt like health in a way that I had known for my whole life. Something's not right. I don't feel right. And I write about in my book, obviously all the things that happened, like I grew up in a home with.
Kelly Berry (35:26)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (35:38)
addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, like so obviously I had like massive amounts of trauma. But at no point was I like, unaware that it was something was not right. And so that's why I was relentless in trying to figure out how to fix what wasn't right. I mean, it took like 45 years, something to figure it out. Like, it didn't figure it out like.
Kelly Berry (35:52)
Mm-hmm.
Gabrielle Pelicci (36:04)
swiftly, but like now I get for whatever life I have left to feel healthy. So like that's, that's good, you know.
Kelly Berry (36:13)
yeah,
right. Like an overnight success after 45 years, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the alternative is to never get to that point, know, which it is to your point, it's a hard path. It takes, it is a lot of work. But I think just to hear you talk about it, it's like worth it.
Gabrielle Pelicci (36:17)
Yeah. Yes.
Yes!
I mean,
like, I get to feel good, like your whole thing, like, feel as good as it looks. I get to feel good. I didn't feel good. I like never felt good. I would have like momentary breaks or like momentary spaces of feeling good. Usually when I was like, oh, I'm like falling in love for like five minutes or you know what I mean? I just want a prize. Like when it was like heightened dopamine, heightened, you know, when there was some kind of heightened
whatever, I would have like a bit of a relief. But then, I mean, within a very short amount of time, I was just like back in it again. And it's so satisfying. Like, like so satisfied.
Kelly Berry (37:14)
Okay.
Yeah, just to be healthy and happy. Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (37:24)
Yeah.
Who would have thought like it's gotta be so hard to just feel good?
Kelly Berry (37:29)
Mm-hmm, I know. As you were talking about like
the sprained ankle, you know, the biggest thing I can like think of off the top of my head to relate to it is after 9-11, I developed extreme anxiety about flying. And I was in a chapter of my life where I was traveling pretty frequently. So it was becoming like pretty debilitating. And I had to, you know, went to the doctor and I got anxiety medicine to help me get through
but I worked on it and one day I woke up and I was not afraid to fly anymore. And I tell you the difference that makes like not dreading, you know, it's like I would dread every flight, but then as soon as I got somewhere, like all I could think about was the flight home. And so I couldn't like enjoy my time anywhere or, you know, it's just, so I totally relate to that. You're just like looking for the exit or looking for...
whatever and then it's like, okay, I could get home and be okay for a minute but then I knew 10 days later, here we go again. And so to be able to get off of a roller coaster like that freeing. Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (38:34)
Yeah, yeah.
And so whatever you did to solve that, you just have to keep doing that. Like whatever you did in that time period to like break that experience, you know, that fear, like that's what you need to repeat over and over again for like all the different ways that you feel frozen, you know, or you feel scared. You just have to keep doing that.
Kelly Berry (38:40)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So what I really want to make sure that we talk about your I think you mentioned to me one time when we were talking that like you realize the missing piece for you was creativity or nature even. And I know like this is what you do now is you help people write you help people tell their stories. So talk about
Like how important creativity is in the whole puzzle, how you realize that, how you address it, and what you really help people do in that, I guess, space.
Gabrielle Pelicci (39:31)
Yeah, I didn't,
it was such a blind spot for me. Cause I was very much stuck in what we were talking about earlier, which is like the Western paradigm and the like, you fix the problem here. All the problem is right here. You know what it was like? The thing that writing did for me that nothing else had ever done for me is that when I displayed my whole, cause I write memoir, I write about my own life. When I wrote my whole life from beginning to end and I told myself my story,
I could finally see the forest from the trees. I could see the whole thing. I could see the patterns, the choices that I made, the bad decisions that I made. I could see in the writing and feel in the writing the places where I was still resentful or so critical of myself. Like the whole and also that digestion process that I mentioned earlier of like digesting the energy and the emotions as I'm writing, I'm crying or I'm raging about the thing I'm writing about.
I'm doing that metabolism. I'm digesting as I'm doing the creative practice. it's not, for me, it's not just important that you do the practice. That's like one part of it. It's also important that you're witnessed. So when I was finally witnessed, when other people are allowed to hear and see my story, then I wasn't stuck in the aloneness.
I don't think we can heal in aloneness. I just don't think we can. I think healing requires, and you'll see this with trees in the forest. I don't know if you know this, but when a tree starts to get sick, all the other tree roots start to send nutrients to the tree that's sick underground. like, I think that's a human condition as well. You need the other tree roots to send you the nutrients that you need. Like, I don't believe it.
I don't believe that humans heal in a vacuum. It wasn't true for me. I could not do it by myself. And so there's something about being witnessed also in all the things that made me who I was that helped me gather strength and power and courage and self-appreciation and self-compassion, like all these things that I needed as part of the healing journey.
And the whole thing then became very medicinal. just became very medicinal. When I was writing, I was also spending a lot of time in nature, because I believe that we need to like also, it's kind of like you get rid of that static electricity when you get outside and you just get in the air and you're just like your feet are on the ground. There's something called earthing. There's all these things, these ways that we kind of like.
refresh or when you get in the ocean and the salt water is like cleansing you, right? I was doing all that as well. And I started to develop a really intimate relationship with nature, which also fed this restoration, this restorative process. So these were critical pieces that were missing for me. I had gotten myself all the way to the point where like I understood trauma.
I was using all of the different tools and practices, but it was this last piece of really recognizing that I'm just as much a part of the planet as the air and the water and the fire and the plants. Somehow we think that we're like, what do we think we are? Somehow we think that we're what? We're like little robots? It's very weird. We're houseplants. We're houseplants with feelings. You would die if.
I took water away from you for like a week. You would die. You're a houseplant. You need sun. You need water. And somehow we have these weird notions. Anyway, so when I restored my relationship to the family of things, which is water and earth, all of it brought me back to life. It brought me back to wholeness. The etymology of the word healing is wholeness, holos.
How are you supposed to be whole if you're completely estranged from your family and from your planet and from your own soul and your own story? How are you supposed to be whole? It doesn't even make any sense. So that was the missing piece for me that really sealed the deal at the end.
Kelly Berry (43:47)
Yeah, and so now you help other, not just women, right? Like anyone, men and women, you help them with the part of telling their story, really.
Gabrielle Pelicci (43:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Which is challenging for people, but I do it in a way like I'm describing to you, which is we do a little bit of hard work and then we go outside and play and we eat some good food and we take a nap and then we do some hard work because it's not, this is not meant to be like a bootcamp something, something, this isn't like bestselling book in three days. That's not what this is. This is like, let's put ourselves back together, like Humpty Dumpty over here and let's like learn new habits.
Kelly Berry (44:00)
Yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (44:27)
and restore in the process of creating, which is like a very unique approach, especially now, like technology and AI, make a book in 30 minutes and like, no, that's not what we're doing. That's not what we're doing.
Kelly Berry (44:40)
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think like the more and more people I've talked to who I will say like on one side or the other of this, who are like on the hamster wheel in the rat just probably think they don't have time to slow down and do any of this work. You know, when you have those conversations, like they have lost touch with creating or creativity or anything like that.
The other side of it, people who I would say are more in touch with who they are on the healing journey, not just on the learning journey, they have tapped into some kind of creativity. And I do truly believe that it is a very important piece of the puzzle that we are here. Think about people, you mentioned like thousand, 10,000 years ago, like.
we just sat around and created things. We were like creative beings and anymore, know, there's a lot of people who can get through a lot of their lives without really creating anything. And it leaves a lot of emptiness and yeah, it really, think it does.
There's some kind of, I don't really know how to describe it, but it's this layer of you don't really get to know yourself if you're not being creative because you don't get to see what you're capable of. Yeah, yeah. So I think I like it. I like what you're doing. I think it's very, yeah.
Gabrielle Pelicci (46:02)
Yeah, well said. Well said. you're being creative, you're making a podcast, you're making programming,
you're doing all the things. So you know you're doing it in real time too.
Kelly Berry (46:16)
I am and you know, but I had to get to a point too where I was like burned out didn't really know what was going on wasn't feeling good wasn't feeling like myself and you know, the podcast was really a I'm putting it out there that I'm gonna do this thing and I need to do this because I need to tap into some creativity. I just need to make something to do something and so really it really started as like and
creative journey inspiration and then it led to I made a journal to go along with it and it's really like snowballed into now, you know, like a an actual organization where we're creating some deliverables and making a difference but I just got into a point where I don't think I was making anything, you know, I was making dinner, but it wasn't really I wasn't really making anything else. So Yeah
Gabrielle Pelicci (47:03)
Yeah. Yeah. And even as you
talk about it, like your whole face lights up when you talk about it, you know?
Kelly Berry (47:08)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I
love it. And it's like, the more I make, the more I want to make. And I know I just shared with you, you know, I've just started the artist's way. I'm really excited to get into that. But I think for all the same reasons that I think those things are just so important to be able to spend time with yourself. It's a scary thing for a lot of people, you know? And that's why we don't slow down. That's why we don't...
sit in silence, that's why people don't meditate, they don't wanna hear what's going on in their own head, but I think I'm in this era where I'm welcoming it. Who am I? What am I about? What do I like? What do I not like? What do I personally think about certain things? That's another thing. think my husband had this, he also has a podcast, and he had this guy on the podcast and he said this stat, which I'm just crazy.
only 1 % of people on the planet have unique thoughts. And so I've just been in this that'll put you in a real tailspin. Like, do I have any unique thoughts? I only thinking about what other people are thinking about? You know, so it's like, how can I like think? And I, you know, I think that's something that like a lot of people just aren't really doing, just not really thinking or not thinking. Obviously 99 % of people aren't doing it. So big deal.
Gabrielle Pelicci (48:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kelly Berry (48:29)
Yeah. was I don't know if there are any points that I've left that we didn't circle back to. But if there. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say.
Gabrielle Pelicci (48:32)
Ha ha ha.
feels like we close the loop on most of it. And also I'm accessible to people I do like
Zoom calls, you know, you go to my website, which is just my name, Gabrielle Pelicci.com if you go to the work with me page, I do free zoom calls to have these conversations, if people want to follow up. And obviously, there's a lot of like resources and names of different practices and things in the books, which you could get paperback or audio. And I think actually, if you're like a
Spotify paid member, think you can even listen to them for free on Spotify if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, so the resources are there and people can, you know, reach out. I love, I love talking to people.
Kelly Berry (49:12)
Yep. Yeah.
All of her contact information, book links, website, all in the show notes. She is super accessible and if you can't tell, a lot of fun to talk to. And so I've enjoyed getting to know her, lucky to live pretty near each other. So that's fun. And yeah, I love everything you're doing, everything you're talking about. I just think it's...
It's really important. And especially, especially in this time that we're living in where there is so much information and there is just so much tunnel vision on the way. And there is no one way, know, there's a million ways. So I love that you are. definitely. Well, thanks for being here.
Gabrielle Pelicci (49:55)
So this is so great that you're able to share all this with your listeners.
Kelly Berry (50:02)
And if you all have any questions for her, definitely reach out. you guys and have a great day.
Gabrielle Pelicci (50:05)
Thanks for listening. Thanks for having me.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
