Look For the Gift
My name is Andrea Amador and I am an abuse survivor. As a child, from the age of 5 – 18, I was sexually molested by many men. It was almost as though I had a sign across my forehead that said, “Sex Toy” I felt demeaned and vulnerable for years. Not having the courage to tell my parents until I was much older, I was locked in a prison of my own creation. For decades, I was absolutely paralyzed by fears stemming from that initial intrusion of my body, mind and spirit. I never felt safe and hysteria and paranoia became close friends.
Looking back on my life, I now realize that those core beliefs of being a bad girl and feeling unsafe were the basis of many foolish decisions that kept me feeling victimized by others. I felt obligated to help everyone and always set my needs aside. I was resentful and angry but felt as though I had no choice because I did not feel good about myself.
For too many years, I had no sense of boundaries. I was completely unable to express my needs and habitually allowed people to take advantage of me physically, mentally, financially, spiritually and emotionally. Now I embrace each of those experiences with a new conscious awareness. It’s taken a while but now I have an enormous appreciation and understanding that those examples from my past and tons of other situations have made me the powerhouse I am today!
Feeling Sorry For Myself
For years, I allowed a lot of those experiences to affect me on so many levels in my personal life. I used those experiences and my memories of past abuse to give me an excuse not to play the game of life. I allowed my demons to keep me locked up in a prison of my own creation. Although I was a grown woman, I had so many issues surrounding trust and love. I was incapable of loving myself. It paralyzed me and I was unable to see and express gratitude for the precious people and many blessings in my life. Never feeling safe, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For many years, I ran the family Real Estate business along with my Nana. When I started, I was 23 years old and Nana was 80. Unfortunate for me, I had made the mistake of prolonging my decision to start college until a year earlier. That was when I decided to go to NYU and get a business degree. Up until that time, I had had no direction in life. I was just a privileged kid at 23. Since I could not continue to handle running a business and go to school, I dropped out of college. That made me resentful. I was angry at everyone all the time. I felt as though I had no choice. Little did I know that I was going to earn my degree in business the hard way!
Trapped By My Own Limiting Beliefs
My Nana and I took care of the needs of 108 tenants in three buildings. Starting out, I knew next to nothing about the business. I was intimidated by this dog eat dog world. It seemed as though each day there was a new crisis. It overwhelmed me! We got calls in from tenants complaining, my desk was always piled with violations, work orders and bills. I had important notes written on napkins, scrap paper and anything else I could grab to scibble on. Having no system of organization, I was always at odds with Nana. She always nagged me to get organized but I didn’t care. Everything was going straight to hell! My desk was strewn with tenants files and folders, annual registration reports, surveys, correspondence. I wanted to just take a match and set fire to it all! I was going nuts! I couldn’t keep it all together. There were always boiler breakdowns, threats, lawsuits, and a problem around every corner. It was up to me to handle the supers and suppliers. I paid the bills and followed through with complaints, but having no sense of boundaries was a huge liability. It felt like everyone and everything was against me. I felt victimized at every turn. Man,was I a sucker!
Nana: My Greatest Role Model
My Nana and I bonded through this terrible time and cultivated an amazing and uniquely beautiful relationship. I soon learned that she was an incredibly strong businesswoman who was really the brains behind the business. As a child, I only knew her as my grandmother but during that time I got to see another side of her. I always knew her to be a warm, loving and nurturing woman. Now I saw how she was that and so much more.
Since the office was in her home, I used to sit and watch in awe as she would phone delinquent tenants and demand back rent. She used to call them at 6:30 a.m. before they left the house with the intention of catching them offguard. My Nana was a very wise woman who was full of resources. She could take on any challenge. Over the years, I watched her and learned from her. I grew to adore her. I noticed that everything that she ever did, she did it with such great finesse and a sense of style and diplomacy. I am so lucky to have had such an amazing role model. My Nana was loving, high spirited, beautiful, tactful, kind, smart, considerate, gracious, and wonderful. She taught me everything I know. I love her dearly. On February 6, 2002, I held my Nana’s hand and stroked her hair as I shared The Lord’s Prayer with her as she slept peacefully. With my words and intentions, I guided her to her favorite place, the beach in Maine at sunset. As she had planned for so long, she got what she wanted, to pass in her sleep with me by her side. I watched her gently drift away from her body with tears rolling down my cheeks as her last wish was granted. That was the day that the baton was passed. That’s when I became a woman.
Nana brought grace and style to everything she did. During those painful years running the business, we clung to each other like life rafts and spent every moment of time with each other. We became each other’s best friends. We often worked long hours and ended up having dinner together. Days quickly ran into nights. Much of my life is a blur during that time. I can’t remember spending time outside of the office with anyone other than Nana. In fact, I remember spending all my time with her. When not working, Nana taught me so many wonderful things. I learned how to sew, cook, bake and make all kinds of wonderful handicrafts. Most of my friends went on and finished college and enjoyed social lives. I didn’t. I was working and spending time with my Nana. Now looking back in retrospect, I see that I wasn’t missing out on anything. I had a Nana who adored me and an opportunity to learn all about the Real Estate world. I was learning from the best.
Over time, I learned how the Real Estate business worked but my feelings and fears about men overcame my ability to exercise good judgment. I always fell into the trap of feeling inferior and being taken advantage of. That caused a lot of pain in my life. Nana saw a need and offered to find me a therapist. In graitude of this incredibly generous gift, I sought out traditional therapy and began to address some of the issues surrounding the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. That helped a little but no significant changes were made with that course of therapy.
I managed to handle myself professionally by using emotional eating as a mechanism to give me the sense of security that I lacked in expressing myself. I also had a horrible tendency to procrastinate and became easily overwhelmed. I hid from everything. In fact, it was that tendency to procrastinate that really made me decide to make a change in my life.
I procrastinated and locked myself away from the world. I used to hide from people. At my top weight, I was 212 pounds. Daily, I stuffed my emotions and fed my pain feeling sorry for myself. Deep down in my heart , with the exception of my Nana, I did not trust most people and was angry all the time. I was miserable. I allowed that to run my life up almost 3 years ago. I was 40 at the time. That was when I decided to make a change. The reason that I stand before you today is because I have had so many people in my life who have always been there for me. I dedicate my work to them.
29 Years Experience in Personal Development Field
Approximately 29 years ago, when I was 11 years old, my precious father introduced me to some of the concepts that demonstrated the power of a human mind. Among my early beginnings, I learned how to open myself up as a trained psychic by using what was then called Silva Mind Control and participating in several other types of seminars and workshops in the area of personal development.
At the time, it was more like learning parlor tricks and soon I became so adept at engaging greater potential that it became frightening. I was learning all of these wonderful new techniques and strategies but did not know how to control them. My intuition was so keenly attuned that I was able to see premonitions and experience many other circumstances that most people never have.
In my early 20’s, I sought out a mentor who taught me about universal law. That was the first time that I began to understand what was happening to me. I understood about the law of attraction and how I had learned how to manifest certain things in my life by resonating with their energy.
That took many years to understand how this all fit into the context of everyday life and how I can use this information to help avoid suffering in the world. Now having fully benefited and after having used many of these technologies and strategies to turn my life around, I can now share these with my audiences. I specialize in working with women in my personal growth seminars and workshops. I’ve been gathering this information for decades and now am ready to share it with you. Let’s use the analogy of food. I love food, don’t you. Think of me as a chef. I have a wide variety of menus that I can share with you. These are recipes I’ll teach you that you can choose to use to make changes in your life.
How My Life Went From 0 -60 Using Energy Psychology Tools
Today I am a Certified Empowerment Coach who is also trained and certified as a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguisitc Programming and Ericksonian Hypnosis. I also use various forms of energy psychology like EFT to create rapid response change for my clients in my coaching work. These are all key elements that I have used with enormous success two years ago to change my life and break out of my own fears and to see beyond and break through my self imposed cocoon of abuse. In short, NLP is a technology that was created in the 1970’s by two brilliant men, Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They studied models for excellence. By that I mean they studied 3 psychologists who were considered experts in their field. Their findings became the basis of what we now call NLP. NLP is a series of techniques and strategies that are specifically designed to affect change at the deepest level of the brain, your subconscious programming.