Broken Open ~ Treating Trauma

REQUEST FOR DONATIONS FOR THE CARE AND TREATMENT OF PTSD FOR SOLDIERS, VICTIMS, FAMILIES, AND INVISIBLES

I am: Susan Belitsky, MEd, MSW, CAGS, Licensed Israeli Tour Guide

Clinical Social Worker, Recreational Therapist, and Expressive Arts Therapist, Animal Assisted Psychotherapy ~ trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), and EMDR.

I ask for donations to support me in supporting others. I am in the business of treating trauma and my practice, office space and home have all been seriously affected by this awful war. Supporting my work >>> supports my life >>> and it will extend from me >>> to my business to >>> INDIVIDUAL SOLDIERS and others >>> to the organization Hametaplim in three streams:

1> A Therapy Fund for Soldiers and people suffering.

2> Organizational costs for my business of Treating Trauma: Visit my website The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy.

 3> Relocation for home and office studio space for therapeutic retreats and the tiyulim and tipulim/travels and treatments.

You can specify where you want your donation to go.

Note: The tip is for Fundly; not for me ~ Be sure to choose the amount you wish to contribute. And thanks. I'm shooting high for the amount to meet the reality of one year of war. Of course, any amount is deeply appreciated and every 18 dollars enhances life exponentially.

~ IF YOU ARE LOCAL~ Accepting BIT, Paybox, and Bank Transfers. You can also donate directly to Metaplim for my services to soldiers.

More than a few words to follow to honor the complexity of the situation and the conversations we don't have time for. It is with my heartfelt intention to humbly inform and explain whatever I can. Considering the times, I think it's worth the time. The horror of October 7th has left each and every one of us wrestling with the reverberations and reactivations of every level of trauma, past and present; that lives within, between and around our entire lives. Please handle this package with care. Read as you wish:

This is a request for immediate financial support so I can continue to provide free or reduced treatment of trauma and the prevention and reduction of PTSD for soldiers, family members, victims, and the many others affected and perhaps invisible. This war has utterly disrupted my life, living space, my work, and workspace; but not my commitment to the work or my ability to be of service! 

Always a gymnast I know how to flip upside down, twist, and land. This seems to be my most valuable tool, especially these days, and it has become the core of my beloved work. A lifetime of learning, wandering, and skill gathering has brought me to this uncanny place of being oddly prepared to be vitally helpful to the moral, spiritual and physical injuries of this war. I have managed to adapt my life and work so completely to this national crisis...and then, sometimes, you just need money. Right now I have reoriented my entire life and the sheer time and energy of the situation has left me full of heart and soul and out of time and money. 

I have been working mostly for free for the past year because I am self-employed and displaced from home and office...and the need for therapists is so severe as we know the immediate danger of all this for the development of PTSD for the entire nation. Immediate care is critical and it is known that sooner is better. I am a deeply dedicated Social Worker and it makes me particularly connected and committed to the people who are invisible in this war and those are unable to pay for the care they so desperately need. As the day unfolds the heartache is everywhere. My most sacred offerings this year have been in the unseen moments of care. 

The other essential way I have found to contribute is with Integrative Therapy Day for Soldiers. I am asking for financial support for the care of the soldiers and the suffering Others who are invisible to the common response. The donations will provide:

1> Direct Care for the treatment of trauma for soldiers and others affected by war. This covers my fees to continue volunteering for Integrative Therapy Days for soldiers, and individual and group treatment sessions. There are battalions every day, all over the country receiving care from volunteer therapists.

2> Recreational, Adventure-Based and Touring Therapy to rebuild lives including Building Awareness through Therapeutic Travel Walks.

3> Psychoeducation about treatment effectiveness & neuroscience  of trauma. 

4> Building a Community of Clinical Support and Learning with integrative trauma-informed therapists. Caring for the caretakers. 

Raising Awareness a Walks for Empathy:

As a therapist and tour guide, I am beginning a campaign of tiyulim and typulim/travels and treatments for the healing and transformation of trauma and identity.

Treating Trauma ~ Jewish Identity ~ Animal-Human Bond ~ Meeting the Other. This is my work and I am asking for funding as an independent clinical practitioner for my part in the unraveling of trauma here so it will not stay in the collective body as post-trauma PTSD for as many people as possible.I have been working relentlessly for a year treating trauma in any and every creative and somatic way I can, mostly volunteering in the face of unprecedented war and heartache ~ and only now I have garnered enough courage to request financial support/start-up funding/business investment so I can continue to provide free and effective treatment for soldiers and others with individual, vicarious, collective or complex trauma.

In this catastrophic situation, I believe we each must do our part; that we are individually being called forth and I am here in the role that only I can fulfill. I know what my work is here, please help me to do it and to support the vast majority that cannot afford the treatment they so painfully need to cope with the unrelenting stress and loss currently gripping us. 

We are holding so much complexity here. Please help me make one thing simpler. Money.

I am working with a group called Metaplim. We are a group of around 2000 therapists and bodyworkers from all fields of study volunteering for Integrative Therapy Days for Soldiers with Integrative, Somatic and Trauma-Informed care and individual sessions. We provide unitive care and treatment for mind, body soul, and soma. I am trained in the most effective research-based techniques for treating and preventing PTSD; we are developing a model for integrating EMDR and somatic work with the bodyworkers' treatments as we all work together in these remarkable therapy days. I am involved in the model development and training.

I now have the most remarkable community of colleagues from all over the country and a present network of work, partners, referrals, and peer support. The groundwork is all solid. The need is overwhelming. The funding is missing. Sometimes you just need money. Volunteering all over the country through this group, I have learned much this year about the effectiveness and demand for my skills and the literal places and ways to integrate my model for addressing inter-generational trauma through the individual, with others, as we relate this profoundly rich habitat of heritage and humanity. I found the dynamic integrative model that so profoundly matches my professional credentials. My private practice is small and established and my business plan is clear. My hard-earned business of treatments and travel was growing until the war derailed everything. Now, after 15 years of seeding and reorienting my whole life in response to this war, my path for engaging, whole being therapy in the context of heritage and place is clear.

As a true Social Worker at heart, my stance has always been that we must care for the soul, live in our bodies, connect this body to the earth, and from this hopefully grounded place ~ meet the other with an authenticity of kindness we each deserve. My work connects on each of these levels: trauma, identity, animals, and meeting the other. 

You can read about my work and follow my journey on my website 

The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy

As a Therapist and Tour Guide I will do a series of walks and tours to raise awareness of the nature and possibilities around trauma and the profound resources we have in this land for personally compelling multi-narrative recovery and healing. The neuroscience will meet the trails and the money will go to a multilayered approach. I will be documenting and writing about my journey across the country and I hope you will sponsor and join me for these walks.  

#1 Soul of the Foot Walk for Awareness: a journey from the lowest place...on earth. The only way is up. Take a 10-day journey of sites that offer the opportunity to explore depressions, tells, burial, ritual, and layers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Broken Open: Our Status and My Status

We are all battle-weary and scarred and doing the best we can to carry on life and hold onto our sanity in the unbalance of war and moral dissonance. I have always believed the balance and health of this country depend on addressing the multilayered complicated cocktail of complex trauma, inter-generational trauma, vicarious trauma, and collective trauma that lives in the body of everyone here affecting every single interaction. Now we have an unprecedented opportunity to raise our nation's health level by bringing trauma-informed treatment to as many people as possible. October 7 shattered so much and we have broken open; the strong and mighty characters here are open to therapy. 

A bit on the therapeutic work. These Unbelievable Treatment days where hundreds of therapists from all professional fields from bodywork to psychotherapy offer their care and expertise to soldiers and the many relatives and victims of this crazy war we are all subjected to whether we agree, disagree, or protest. These days are unbelievable...you see soldiers from all backgrounds, religious, hiloni/secular, Jewish, Bedouin, Druze getting reflexology, massages, osteopathy, or with me and many other psychotherapists...EMDR, EFT Tapping, Somatic Experiencing, and Trauma Release. These are my credentials along with Clinical Social Work, Recreational Therapy and Expressive Arts Therapy, and combined with my Israeli Tour Guide knowledge, I'm doing adaptive, intensive trauma education and somatic relief and reprocessing. People can feel in their bodies that this stuff really works and know to keep looking for treatment when they are ready. Trauma is not a life sentence with the right care. 

Right now what fills the demand is free and accessible treatment as easy as possible. I am asking for donations so I can continue to do these treatment days 2-3 days a week and offer personal sessions to those invisible and off the radar along with the heroes we know are reaching. As easily as possible. Life here is so intensely complicated. Anything simplified would be a gift from heaven. 

My full vision and business plan are included and elucidated on my website. The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy: a work in progress.

This fundraiser is for direct treatment and also for the overhead of my work/living space. This is a unique situation and ~ as for many of the therapists and healers know ~ it is hard to ask for support in donations to cope with a war cast upon us and for the immediacy of the current crisis. It is very hard to take money right from people inflicted by a situation that seems insanely wheeling out of anyone's grasp. In order to keep doing this work, I've turned to fundraising and finding financial backing for my therapeutic business. 

Life Untethered: My Status ~ thankfully securely connected to nature.

Many of you know I was living in a Bedouin Village in the north on October 7 when all hell broke loose here. My studio office space is also in the village as a base for therapeutic care and tourism.  Although the village was safe, as Bedouins also serve in the army and police, I felt I needed to leave and be in a Jewish environment where I understood more of what was going on around me. Many Bedouin men serve in the army and they too were called up for duty as others; we were all nervous together. But times were so uncertain then. We had no idea what would happen and in the village, it was hard for me to stay informed. I moved temporarily to the Jewish moshav on the other side of my beautiful oak forest. It was a temporary solution, followed by another temporary solution there, and then another move to the center of the country; also temporary until I find a new place to live and work. My work in therapeutic adventure and tour guiding completely crashed to a halt. My home, office, and work were all uprooted in the upheaval of these traumatic months in the collective experience here. The time allowance for living in my current situation is reaching its limit. I have to earn and raise the funds, find a place and move in the next month (or so).

Ironically I have found much stability and professional support in these volunteering days. I have become very much involved in creating community, supporting the therapists, training and organization development.

The sooner I have the financial means and find a place to live and build my therapeutic retreat place, the more available I can be for the much-needed therapeutic work. In the meantime, doing these therapy days for soldiers, the unseen therapy along with a follow-up caseload, has allowed me a beautiful framework for contributing my personal expertise in an adaptive integrative approach to therapy while being a part of an incredibly skillful and supportive therapeutic community nationwide. Pretty good for a tour guide. I want to work at full capacity now and offer my services for free or reduced cost. Please help me with the funding necessary to move and relocate, settle and work. 

Just to add another sprinkle of pepper, the rent in my office studio space doubled since the beginning of the war as the owner needs the space for his own means of financial recovery from this war. I have to move my office as well and find a new home. Until then I am paying double. Now is the time to build my vision of a home and retreat place for travels and treatments, tiyulim and tipulilm. 

So...help as your heart moves you, bless this, pass it on, and feel free to say what you want the money to serve. 

>To support soldier therapy days

>Individual therapy sessions for soldiers and victims

>Individual therapy sessions for anyone

>Recreational therapy activities

>Relocation of my work and living space. I am looking for a place where I can both live and create a retreat space for tiyulim & tipulim. 

> General organizational funds for marketing, networking, supervision, and business development

> Adopt a dog: care and supplies for the animal-assisted psychotherapy part of my work. Healing each other.

More about my work on my ever-evolving website The Hollow Path Experiential Therapy

Treating Trauma Restores Empathy

Stay tuned for some serious tiyulim, tipulim, and writing. 

From my heart to yours,

Susan

Susan J. Belitsky, MEd, MSW, CAGS, Certified Israeli Teacher & Licenced Israeli Tour Guide