My Story
Elisabetta Franzoso - MA in Counselling, Dip Psychology & Gestalt Therapy
“My life experience, career as a corporate trainer and 25 years of working as a coach and counsellor have culminated in the creation of ‘Get Into Your Groove Integrative Life Coaching’, an impactful and innovative programme for men and women wanting to find and get into their groove.”
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In 2008, I published my first book, ‘Stella’s Mum Gets Her Groove Back - A True Story’, in Singapore. My intention through this book was to share my own journey of transformation in the hope it would inspire other individuals to speak out and write their own stories as a way to heal themselves and their lives.
I wanted to share a short, succinct version of the personal journey I described in that book, so as to share how I arrived to be where I am today and why I am so passionate about inspiring others to fulfil what I believe every human being’s life purpose is: to grow, expand and become whole.
My mum was raised by her paternal grandmother. She was only one year old when her parents separated and, her father being the one with the money, won full custody. Her biological mother had been emotionally unstable since childhood when she endured a deep trauma thought to be sexual abuse, and lived most of her life in a psychiatric hospital. My mum grew up in a very intimidating environment with an abusive and violent father. Like many survivors, she built a wall around herself, enshrouded by anger and denial, in a bid to remain mentally functional amongst the chaos. Eventually, she married my dad and started her own family at a relatively young age.
My father was quiet and lived life in fear of daring to be himself. I never saw him rebel against anything my mother or her own father would say, ask or do. He always appeared as this gentle, good man who had seemingly lost contact with his authentic self through the years. His younger sister had died at 22, just one month before getting married and his mother passed away only 5 years after that when he was only 23.
Based on outside appearance, my mum and dad were a happily married couple, but of course this wasn’t the reality behind closed doors. My dad used to hide away in the TV room and watch in silence for hours on end after dinner. He didn’t have friends and had sooner learnt to swallow my mum and grandfather’s emotional and mental abuse towards him than say or do anything to change the circumstances. He was only 40 years old when he had his first medical intervention on his LEAVER (known as the organ connected to anger) and 53 when he suffered his first heart attack. He spent the best part of the next 20 years in and out of hospital. He was known as the ‘good man’ who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But he also never protected me from my mum’s physical abuse and was in his own way one of my first abusers.
Today I’m aware that the abuse and neglect I endured as a child had, without a doubt, been the result of trans-generational trauma and emotional disfunctionality running through the whole family system.
The trauma we suffered as a family and my eventual exploration of all that had been happening within the whole family system, had a huge influence on my decision to go back to study when I was 37 and living in Singapore. My first counsellor was the one who suggested I could be a successful therapist because of my past experiences and the way I’d been able to transform my pain into courage to ask for help, taking responsibility for the abuse and neglect that I’d gone on to repeat with my daughter and husband. That first therapist, Marilyn Shearer, was the one who pushed me to recognise the innate gifts I had and could tap into to inspire other men and women.
My childhood was deeply challenging but not much of an exception because so many people and families in the world experience abuse and neglect. They wind up in the same cycle of denial and omission of the realities and horrors that go on within the home as my mum did.
I’m aware today that my experiences as a child and adolescent, wife and mother, have been the guiding forces to become the brave and resilient woman I am today. It was an inner drive though, that enabled me to find the courage to reinvent myself and return to the drawing board on the cusp of my 40’s. It was that persistent voice from within that motivated me to overcome all the obstacles that presented themselves along the way and supported me in taking responsibility for my irresponsibility and pain, transforming it into courage and confidence necessary to get my said groove back.
I have a profound passion for the work I do and I’m continuously evolving and studying as a human being and coach committed to walking her talk.
My Life Coaching programme is the result of all this life and experience, a proven and fundamental pathway for anyone deeply committed to their transformation inside and out, and eager to finally get into their groove.
