Allison Ray Benavides Shakti Rising Graduate Fall 2004
“EVERY DAY I look at my lovely life in amazement and smile with humble gratitude for Shannon Thompson and all of the inspiring women at Shakti Rising who lovingly supported me in my healing journey toward wholeness and happiness. I never thought I deserved to have the rich, full, loving life I have today. But through my experiences at Shakti Rising I learned to know that I not only deserve goodness, but that I am a capable and powerful enough woman to create the kind of blessed life I had always sat on the sidelines and watched everyone else have. The experience is truly transformational - and four years later, my life continues to be transformed for the better. The effective skills I learned and practiced while at Shakti are so integrated into my way of being that I continue to benefit and grow more solidly into who I am - a loving, generous, compassionate, and powerful woman.
Prior to finding Shakti Rising, I hid out in a cubicle in Sorrento Valley working a miserable and lonely job as a computer programmer. While at Shakti Rising, I would look around at their powerful staff and wonder why I could never be as gifted and wonderful as them. I envied their ability to heal. I envied the skill set, conviction, personal power, and integrity they had to be able to do so. I had felt so sad and weak for so long, and here they were so vibrant and strong. But by the time I graduated from Shakti, I had learned how to tap into my own source of healing - to find and express my own strength and power. I went back to school for my masters degree in social work and am currently working in a group home for foster youth. For the first time in my life, I LOVE my job! Not because of what my professors taught me in my master's program, but because of all I learned from the women and work at Shakti Rising - I know that I am an effective social worker, counselor, and healer.”
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