How I Healed Podcast

Content notice: This episode of How I Healed includes brief, but graphic, descriptions of rape, sexual exploitation, suicidality and suicidal ideation.

Olivia Ballard grew up homeschooled in the Church of Latter Day Saints. While this gave her a strong foundation of family and faith, it chafed at her self-expression, especially of her sexuality. When encountering identity politics for the first time, she found community and the security she needed to express lesbian sexuality. But her acceptance in this new community was conditional upon displaying overt loyalty to a new church, the church of Queer Theory.

This led her further and further from her family of origin, into the welcoming arms of Johns, pimps, drug users, and traffickers. Along the way, she began to express chronic symptoms like eczema, food allergies, depression, drug dependence and more. Her body was asking for her to slow down, to protect herself, but she was young and highly impressionable, and listened to outside authorities over her inner wisdom.

Nearly fatal experiences of pharmaceutical withdrawal and sexual exploitation were survived with the loving presence of Olivia’s ancestors. Through their support, and through reintegration with her living family, Olivia found the inner strength to pursue radical responsibility and self-acceptance. She turned to nature, herbs, body work, and a deep faith in God’s plan for her life, to transmute expressions of disease into incredible vitality.

Now, Olivia is building a life of service to families and children. She is an early childhood development specializing in ancestral childrearing. A songwriter herself, she also teaches music, cooking, and somatics to families. She believes in the sovereignty and wisdom of young children, and the messages they offer in the family constellation. She is in love with the act of laying beneath the flowers’ faces and listening to their tales. She seeks to combine her love of plant medicine with her talent for caring for families by weaving their magic into daily life. Her deepest satisfaction comes from anointing herself and others with holy, flower-infused oil and witnessing transformation take place.