Is it too late for me to...?
The answer is no. And The Uplifters will prove it.
This is a space for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching, helping people turn “someday” into “I did it.”
Listen to this episode if...
You are the person everyone calls for help, but you can’t remember the last time you asked for help.
Compliments make you squirm.
The voice in your head is unreasonably critical.
You’ve ever asked yourself who you are when you are not doing things for other people.
You love someone who seems unable to accept their own goodness.
There is a Rose of Sharon in my yard that grew unevenly this year. One branch leafed out early and was quickly loaded with big, beautiful blossoms. One area grew in later, but stayed patchy, and another section never bloomed at all.
Google confirmed that this can happen when a plant sustains an especially rough winter. Today’s guest confirmed it’s a pretty perfect metaphor for Developmental Trauma.
Developmental trauma is what happens when a child grows up without the comfort, safety, and delight she needs to develop fully, so parts of her never get to grow, and she builds survival strategies around the gaps.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to spot the signs, why affirmations and positive thinking cannot reach this psychological layer, and how our guest’s five domains of development help women move from “I’m a people pleaser” to “belonging to themselves.”
Host note: When I met today’s guest, I had no idea what Developmental Trauma was. By the end of it, I’d armchair-diagnosed myself, my children, my foremothers, and most of my friends with it. I’m excited to hear what you think!
Today’s Uplifter
Zipa Leah Scheinberg, LCSW grew up as the tenth child of a Holocaust survivor, in a family built on survival instincts. As a kid, she sensed that something was missing in her home.
She remembers taking the subway down to the 42nd Street Library as a young girl and walking the shelves, hoping a book would name what she could feel but was unable to name. That search became her life’s work. Today she is a developmental trauma theorist and clinician with nearly two decades of practice in New York, and the creator of the Developmental Trauma Decoded framework.
What she describes will sound familiar to anyone who has ever been the dependable one. (Ahem, willing to bet that describes most of us reading and hearing this.)
Developmental trauma isn’t necessarily a single dramatic event, like an accident or a war. It’s also childhood experiences that interrupt development in quieter ways, like family secrets, growing up with addiction, or a shut-down parent. The child doesn’t feel comforted, delighted in, wanted, cherished, or protected. She calls these sins of omission, meaning what didn’t happen leaves as much of a mark as what did.
Those missing pieces leave parts of us underdeveloped, and we adapt around them. Zipa Leah describes these adaptations as survival architectures. In adult women, it often shows up as hypervigilance that looks like anxiety or depression, a harsh inner critic, and the inability to take in kindness while giving endlessly.
But it’s not a life sentence. Because the problem is interrupted development, the healing happens by redeveloping what was missing, and that is possible at any age.
Her courage practice
The practice Zipa Leah begins with is deceptively simple. Instead of asking whether you are worthy (a word she says gets bandied around until it means nothing), she asks whether each part of you is welcome. Do you belong to yourself?
Most women tell her they don’t. Many women between 45 and 60 feel deep shame about not knowing who they are, as if we should have figured it out by now. Zipa Leah sees it as a signal that parts of us were never mirrored back, and those parts can still be developed.
She describes the payoff as a kinder relationship with yourself, deeper relationships with others, and the chance to break generational cycles so the next generation does not have to work so hard.
Lift her up
You can find Zipa Leah and her free resources at ZipaLeah.com, and sign up to receive her workbook on belonging, coming soon.
If you loved this story, listen to these stories next
Kristy Halvorsen on learning to belong to herself.
Sarah Nelson on sexual empowerment in midlife
