Today we’d like to introduce you to Holly Busse.
Hi Holly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I keep things pretty simple. You won’t see many links at the end of this article because I only have a few. In my sixty-one years of being on this planet, I have had experiences that have turned into stories of my life. Experiences that have changed me shaped me, healed me, and, many times, brought me to my knees. When I meet people, I know I will likely forget their names, but I won’t forget the stories they tell me about their lives.
My story begins with my divorce at the age of forty. After living in the same small town all my life, I found myself moving to Minneapolis. Both my sons were in college at the time, so not only was I now divorced, but I was also empty nesting. It was quite a shock to my system. I had never been on my own. I was married at 18, had my first son at 19, and my second son was born two years later. The first months of my divorce, I felt like I was a kindergarten student going straight to high school, and I didn’t know the curriculum. I decided to get away for a while, gather my thoughts, and figure out what I would do with my life. I found a class that intrigued me in New Mexico, so within a week, my car was packed, and I was on the road. Little did I know that trip would be with me for a very long time.
During my time in New Mexico, I was invited to a sweat lodge ceremony. The day after the sweat, someone who had participated in the ceremony came to me and said they had a message for me. The message was to pray daily: “I believe that I may see.” I thanked them for the information, and of course, when I got back from the trip, I forgot all about it and was out looking for the next shiny piece of information that would save me. I didn’t take the advice, but it would revisit me years later. At the time of my divorce, I had a reiki practice, and being on my own meant that I might have to add to my skills. Since I loved health and wellness, I became certified as a personal trainer. I landed a job at a gym and loved it. This opened up a whole new avenue for me. Not only was I doing reiki, but I was also training, teaching classes, building another business on the side, doing speaking engagements, writing, and so on. I was rocking it on all levels. I worked well over 60 hours a week and was unstoppable.
One day, I received an invitation to do a speaking engagement for a medical community. I would be one of four speakers, and I would be speaking about reiki and self-care. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was waiting for my turn to say, and something very familiar started to happen, something that hadn’t happened in many years. I got a bit chilled, then hot. My hands began to tingle, and then my legs felt numb. My breathing changed, and my heart was racing. When my vision started to become tunnel vision, and my hearing sounded like I was in a barrel, I knew exactly what was happening. I was having a full-blown panic attack.
All I could do was pray, “Dear God, not now, please, not now.” I remember walking up to the podium and feeling completely numb, including my lips. I have no idea how I got through it or what I said, but I knew it wasn’t good. I was humiliated. I left immediately after speaking and sat in my car in the parking lot, trying to figure out what happened. That was the beginning of a terrible time in my life. The panic feeling didn’t subside. I went to work every day that week, and it kept worsening. I didn’t want anyone to know because, after all, I was superwoman! I only told one other coworker at the gym. She would check in on me while I was teaching so I could see her and know she would be there if I needed her. After a horrible week, I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I had had a stroke. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, my speech was messed up, I had no control over my body, and I was terrified. When I could gather myself, I called my sister, and she picked me up and took me to her house.
The following day, I got up at 5:00 a.m. to go to work, still feeling horrible, but I didn’t get paid if I didn’t work. Within two hours of being at work, I had to call my sister again, and she took me to the ER, which, by the way, happened to be the ER of the hospital where I had done the speaking engagement for the week before. Pretty ironic, right? They hooked me up to monitors, looked at all my vitals, and decided further testing would be necessary. When my sister informed them that I had no insurance, the doctor wrote me a prescription for a vacation. He said either I slow down or I would be seeing him often. To add insult to injury, the person who had hired me for the speaking engagement was working in the ER that day and saw me. I wanted to tell her I had a heart attack. Talk about humiliating.
Here I was, the woman who talked about self-care and relaxation, stretched out on a hospital bed, having a panic attack. During that next week, I followed up with my general practitioner because I was convinced it couldn’t be “just stress.” An interesting thing happened during that visit. As the nurse was done taking my blood pressure, she paused, looked me in the eyes, and said, “You know, Holly, sometimes you just have to believe to see,” then she walked out the door. I had never seen this person; honestly, I didn’t even know if she was real. Maybe she was just there to deliver the same message I was told in New Mexico. I still didn’t understand what it meant but knew I had to figure it out. With no insurance, medical bills mounting, and my job on the line, I had to make changes, or this would be my life.
I knew how to do many things but needed to practice my preaching. I vowed to take time to do reiki on myself. I started doing a breathing program every day. I took time to meditate. I went for long walks. I had to let some things go and made a schedule my body could handle. It didn’t happen overnight, but little by little, I started feeling better. The most significant change for me was that I was beginning to understand the message. “I believe that I may see.” I didn’t trust the process of life. I was living my life backward. I wanted proof that things would work out, and then I would believe. I realized how afraid I had been trying to control every aspect of my life for so many years. I was living in fear that it wouldn’t happen if I didn’t make it happen. Let go; let God take on a whole new meaning for me. I wish I had listened to the advice when I first heard it, but sometimes hard times have encouraged the most significant transformations in my life.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I was in a role where people looked up to me. It was embarrassing not to “have it all together,” mainly because I did this as my career. I helped people relax. I helped them find ways to live a more healthy lifestyle, and here I was falling apart. I used all my energy trying to hide the panic attacks when I could have been using that energy to heal. The challenge for me was to open up and be vulnerable enough to know that I didn’t have to be perfect. But that was not what I wanted people to learn about me. It took me a long time to let people in on what I was going through. I didn’t like feeling “weak”. I enjoyed the fact that I was looked at as strong and could handle anything, but it was a false belief. My body was living proof of that. The truth was that I was struggling. It was also a false belief that being vulnerable was a weakness. It’s not. It takes a ton of courage to be vulnerable. I found that the biggest obstacle to my healing was “me.” I had to get out of my way and let something bigger take the wheel of my life. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do.
I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Tiny Imperfections, LLC?
– Speaker/Columnist Reiki Practitioner/Teacher
– Spring Forest Qigong Practitioner/Certified Practice Group Leader
– Personal Trainer
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
The more I opened up to people about what I had been dealing with, the more comfortable people felt talking about their struggles with anxiety. Letting go of trying to be perfect was very freeing. What I had thought was a massive imperfection in me and my life turned into a gift. It took me to a new level of compassion and understanding, and I am grateful. What had caused me so much humiliation and embarrassment, or so I believed at the time, is now one of the first things I talk about when I speak. When I work with people, I have a whole new level of understanding. I still practice the breathwork, my self-reiki sessions, meditation, prayer, going for long walks, and most of all, believe me, when I say I am still working on it, I let go and let God.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tinyimperfections.com
Image Credits
America Roe Photography by Crystal Joy
