Serena was diagnosed with various mental disorders; severe depression, suicidal tendencies, compulsive overeating, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, and finally with the correct diagnosis-dissociative identity disorder. Serena entered a 28-day hospital program for people suffering from dissociative issues, which turned into eight months of commitment due to her instability. As a result, she lost her three sons to foster care.
It took thirty-five years for Serena to heal and stop dissociating from stressful situations. She did it by connecting to her authentic self through the guidance of Norma Delaney, a woman who committed over twenty years to helping Serena heal. Through specific breath practices, integration, learning to stay in the moment, and differentiating between her trained mind and the truth, Serena overcame the trauma that controlled her for most of her life. She learned how to care for herself mentally, spiritually, and physically.
Serena Masterson works full-time as a lending officer and is a chamber member in her hometown. She has close contact with her sons and enjoys speaking publicly about her journey, mentoring trauma clients, painting, writing, and going on walks.
Serena-Faith Masterson lived in victim energy, entirely controlled by a belief system that had been trained into her from birth. The belief system she operated from was the MK Ultra’s top-secret mind control program created by the CIA and the satanic cult establishment she was born into. She existed unconsciously, living in a constant state of dissociation.
In 1996 she learned how to do the compassionate breath, which was the beginning of her new life. This conscious breath empowered her by connecting her to her body and Soul.
Serena had always looked outside of herself for answers, but as she was guided to go within to seek her truth, she began to connect with her Essence. Serena discovered a wise, compassionate energy dwelling within herself. It was a healing balm to her constant pain and inner turmoil. Choosing non-judgment over fear and self-hatred was the alchemy that allowed authentic transformation.
Serena had hated herself her entire life and believed she was broken. But she didn’t give up; instead, she continued to breathe and face her past with courage. Serena’s Soul did a dance of integration with the physical human. As Serena sat in the presence of her pain without resistance, it allowed it to come home, birthing her true identity. Year after year, as each choice was made, it layered itself one on top of the other, strengthening her. Serena came out of the bowels of hell to discover the brilliant, Devine human being that she is.
Serena knows she is not a victim of her experience this lifetime. Instead, she knows she is the creator of everything she endured. These are not mere words; she knows it to be true. It resonates throughout her physicality, enlivening her. The choice to wake up to the game of fear this lifetime enables Serena to be a conscious creator. When she discovers a belief that keeps her stuck, she sits with it in the compassionate breath, allowing it to open without resistance, transforming into higher consciousness.
Serena lives her life in gratitude. She mentors individuals worldwide interested in setting themselves free from their past trauma. Watching these people open to their Essence is one of her greatest joys. The wise, compassionate energy she emanates allows the person to safely let go into the embrace of their own exquisite Soul for healing.
In 1995, before her healing journey, Serena’s Soul gave her the name Serena-Faith Masterson to support her in letting go of her identity of being a victim. It means; serene faith, master of the Christ within, which she now lives fully!
Compassionate breath is pure consciousness, which empowers the individual. It is stabilizing, grounding the individual in this now moment outside of the PTSD traumatic event. It is the vehicle to move memory, and the personality (aspect), into the individual’s wholeness (Soul). Without this pivotal piece, the trauma remains stuck energetically. This is what we call Soul Integration. Integration means into the greatness of me.
All of us have had traumatic events in our life. That piece of energy is locked in our physical bodies, in space and time, which can keep us emotionally crippled. Through the breath, we transmute the event with the energy of compassion.
Compassion is truth without feeling sorry for the individual. It is seeing the brilliance of another person no matter how they are presenting themselves. Trauma can integrate through breath combined with compassion. That is the miracle of this type of compassionate breath. It overcomes anxiety, depression, self-mutilation, PTSD, grief, rage, and a myriad of emotional coping skills by grounding the individual in this reality, bringing all of their energy back into their body, and strengthening their choice to live. It brings the individual into the present moment from a place of higher consciousness.
* The compassionate breath needs to be taught from an experienced individual who uses this breath themselves.
Treatment should begin with teaching the client the compassionate breath. When dealing with a severely traumatized human being, their daily routine is controlled by their need to survive. Even if they have been out of the trauma for years, they might not realize it due to PTSD.
Norma began by teaching me how to breathe. I breathed backward, which means that my belly went in when I inhaled, and when I exhaled, my stomach went out. I was in a constant state of hysteria and anxiety, and she invited me to practice this new way of breathing throughout the day.
I had tremendous anxiety all the time, and I used this specialized breath to help me cope. I would watch my hand go up and down with the movement of my stomach until the anxiety would lessen. Sometimes it took over a half hour before I began to feel better.
Physical and eye movement exercises to reroute the neural pathways in my brain, which were directed by my Soul.
I would be traumatized by memory, and Norma would invite me to look around the room while asking me if it was happening now. I was gripped in memory so completely, I believed it was happening now. She would have me rub the couch, feeling the upholstery’s fabric underneath my fingertips. She would speak to me, telling me to look around the room; asking me what I saw. Still feeing panicked, I would speak out loud, describing the room in detail, which helped me to come back into this reality. She helped me grasp that it was memory and not happening now. This was crucial for my recovery.
I came off all medication because it was not helping me. I stopped using Klonopin, Prozac, and Ambien because it clouded my ability to feel.
Norma never saw me as broken; instead, she saw the brilliance of my Soul that kept me alive and sane in unimaginable circumstances. She never had a plan to help me; she allowed her inner wisdom to guide her.
We disassembled my belief system. My parents, she said, could not love me because they could not love, period; neither of them knew what love was. That one lesson took many times of us speaking about it before I fully understood. I had hundreds of beliefs.
I Am Serena is a harrowing yet remarkably uplifting story that recounts how I integrated over three hundred unique personalities into the woman I am today. Before my birth in 1955, my father contracted me to the government’s mind-control program called MKUltra. The program’s goal was to find a way to control human beings through the portal of the mind. Surrendering his child for experimentation was not unusual for my father; he had no regard for human life since he was the head of a multi-generational satanic cult.
At three days old, I was brought home from the hospital, where my training began. I experienced severe abuse aimed at splitting my identity, and it continued into my adulthood. Although my upbringing was horrific, my memoir is inspiring, sharing in storybook fashion how I journeyed toward discovering my identity as a Soul human being through the guidance of higher consciousness and an unwavering commitment from Norma Delaney.
In my book, I write, “In truth, there was no I. There was no awareness of myself as an individual. Instead, there was a physical body, containing fragmented consciousnesses, held together by my Soul to move the life forward. Imagine a revolving door, quickly ushering people in and out. Each personality that comes forward will pick up the conversation where the last one left off. There can be no indication of the switch because that will attract your attention. There is a cohesiveness of awareness, which allows all the personalities to flow as one.”
After ten years of working with top-notch doctors in the field of Dissociative Identity Disorder, I felt hopeless. Memories continued to flood me of things so unimaginable that all I could do was believe they were lies. I wanted to integrate to get my sons home again. I had it all planned out, I thought. I could only dream of surviving. I latched onto the idea of integration in shortsightedness. But my Soul knew a greater truth. She knew of things I could not imagine. During my therapy sessions, she began to whisper, “There is something more.” When I finally let go of my idea of how I would integrate and opened to her invitation, my life-changing adventure began.
I met Norma Delaney a few weeks later in 1996. She was an energy facilitator with Spirit. She introduced me to compassion and higher consciousness through the energy of Kuan Yin. Norma’s Essence touched me like nothing I had ever known before. Her brown eyes sparkled, assuring me all was well, and her voice had a sound that resonated deep within me. When I was in her presence, I felt as though I was wrapped in a cocoon of loving warmth. For the first few years of our work, feeling terrorized was normal for me. Frantically, I would call her on the phone, and the moment I heard her voice, my entire body would shudder with relief. I could sense there was another reality outside the fear I always lived in. That is why I kept coming back, no matter how difficult our work became.
Norma challenged every single thing I believed. Only through the sacred breath could I begin to hear what she was telling me and have the courage to face my past. She would patiently repeat the same thing to whoever came forward in the body to speak to her. It was Norma’s unending patience and compassion that made the difference, but despite all of that, it took years before ‘we’ trusted her.
Norma revealed a conversation she had with Garret years before. After hearing the same discussion for the umpteenth time, he asked, “How can you repeat the same thing over and over again? Doesn’t it frustrate you?” Smiling serenely, she replied, “But Garret, I was speaking to Roberta, and she had never heard it before.”
Every personality presented themselves as separate individuals with their unique physical characteristics and names. Most were children, some were adults, and a few were monsters. But each one had their part to play to keep the body alive and sane. It wasn’t until the last few years of our work that Norma showed me that these parts of me were aspects of memory. This awareness allowed me to integrate the traumas of my life more easily.
I marveled at our innocence when we started this journey. Neither of us knew how huge an undertaking it would be. It was Norma’s constant yes that made it all possible. She committed herself fully to me. It wasn’t until after Norma died that I began to realize how true that was. Geoff Hoppe told me that no matter where she was in the world, she made the time to connect with me. He remarked that Norma would be having dinner with a group of Shaumbra people and excuse herself to call me on the phone. She knew I lived in constant fear, and if I heard her voice, I would be comforted. People over the years asked her why she kept working with me. They thought it was taking too long. But their opinions didn’t matter to her, for she knew the progress we were making. Norma would say, “If you didn’t meet me at every turn to do this work, Serena, I would have stopped long ago.” And when I did balk by resisting her guidance, she would stop and allow me to choose what I wanted. This simple act allowed me to connect more deeply to being a creator. I had been a victim, playing the game of fear for so long that this was an integral part of my healing.
I lived with Norma and Garret for the first two weeks of the year 2001 to keep me safe from the aspects that wanted to kill me. From the beginning, I had been trained to never tell the secrets. Specific personalities within the system had learned to keep the secrets at any cost, and the closer I got to the truth, the more they were triggered to do their job and kill the body. Only through Norma and Garret’s vigilance to keep me safe during that time am I alive today.
When they moved to Colorado, they brought me with them. And that is when the real work began. For the next seven years, I lived alone in my little house in Evergreen and had no contact with anyone but Norma.
Norma loved me a breath at a time. Conscious Soul breathing was the tool she taught me to connect to my inner stillness. It was how I began to distinguish between truth and the lies of my trained mind. Norma demonstrated that the compassion and stillness that existed within her was also within me, and all I had to do was access it through this sacred breath. I learned that my Soul loved me so completely and without judgment that she did whatever it took to keep my body alive and my mind sane. It was my beliefs that labeled me as bad or wrong.
When we worked with a memory that elicited judgment, Norma would admonish me and say, “You get to choose Serena. Will you stay with judgment, or will you come deep into your core and breathe? Feel the truth of what your Soul knows.” Holding me in compassionate love, she would wait to see what I would choose. Closing my eyes, I would ask my Soul to help me feel the truth. And as I breathed, I would begin to feel a reality outside the cruel words of my mind. It resonated within me, showing me through feeling that what Norma said was true. That is what created my awareness as an individual.
Initially, I began writing my story to help me connect to the truth. I would sit down at the computer, close my eyes, and allow the memories to surface through Soul guidance. There were layers and layers of dissociative numbness between me and what had happened in my life. It took years of me writing down my experiences before I began to connect with what had happened. When I started to feel how real these events were, it took my breath away. I felt the terror and feelings of abandonment, and they would engulf me in painful emotions. It was only through the compassionate breath that I was able to integrate them. Integration is the act of bringing home old energy, old wounds, and aspects through the breath ‘into the greatness of me.’ I could no longer pretend that what had happened to me wasn’t real. I felt it in every fiber of my body. I had believed my memories were a lie, but that belief disappeared the more I connected to the truth of what I had lived. As I faced the consequences of my experiences from non-judgment, I fell in love with myself more and more, and my past could no longer control me in the same way.
That is the miracle Norma gave me! Through the power of the breath, combined with the willingness to face the truth of what I believed, we began to disentangle the nightmare I had lived. I often felt that my system was like a giant rubber band ball, holding thousands of bands tightly woven together, and if any one of those bands broke, the entire thing would explode. To live life like that was exhausting. Over the past few years, I have had people ask me how I dared to work with Norma. I was surprised by their question. Here was this woman who offered me not only unending compassion and love, but who always, and I mean always, told me the truth no matter how difficult it was for her. Plus, the kind of pain I was in is inconceivable for most people to grasp, and that pain kept me motivated to open to her guidance no matter how difficult it was. Courage didn’t feel like it was part of the equation because you will do whatever it takes to stay alive when you are drowning.
When I discovered that my mother had intentionally called me by different names to create multiple personalities, I was devastated. I had held out hope that she hadn’t hurt me as my father had. As I rocked back and forth, trying to grasp what my mother had done to me, Norma held a space of quiet acceptance. She didn’t try to fix me or tell me I would be alright. Instead, Norma invited me to ask my Soul for her insight. This was the gift Norma offered me. She insisted I find my own answers. She invited me to go to my Soul for comfort. Her intention all along was to help me find me. And as I went within, I felt the compassion from my Soul well up inside me, calming me so I could feel the truth resonate in my body, and that spoke more powerfully to me than words could. This is how I was created as the first authentic consciousness in the body. As I stopped switching and stayed, no matter how uncomfortable I was, breathing all the while, it allowed more of me to be here. I was choosing to live, and this choice fed me, adding to my experience. When I try to share with people that I, Serena-Faith Masterson, really wasn’t born until I had met Norma Delaney, they are confused. I understand that. To birth new consciousness in an adult body to create a new life is a miracle. But that is what my Soul intended all along. The mass of aspects designed to keep the body alive was like actors in a play holding space until real life could be created. This journey has been incredible. When you hear the words, “With Spirit anything is possible,” you can know it is true because I am a living example of that statement. What seemed like impossible odds to many were not to my Soul because she knew we could accomplish my integration one breath at a time.
My story is full of wisdom that is useful to anyone trying to quiet the noise created by the mind, such as negative thinking about oneself, feelings of stress or overwhelm, and fear. Every memory I share is from the perspective of compassion and non-judgment. The memoir illuminates how I transformed from a fearful person plagued with PTSD into a person of aliveness and joy.
Anyone can turn within to begin a relationship with their Soul. All you have to do is invite your Soul to be a part of your everyday life. No matter how loud the fear seems to get, the stillness that lives in the core of each of us is the ingredient needed to guide us out of the traumas of our past. Every person has been wounded in their life, and through the compassionate breath, they can be healed.
I have an ongoing relationship with my sons, who are now adults. I work at a local bank in my community. I thought by the time my book came out, I would no longer be working as a banker, but that was a mind idea. Yet again, my Soul had a greater plan. In staying at my job, I discovered what it feels like to be transparent. My story is out there for anyone to read, and I am safe. Clients come in and share what my story meant to them. Some have cried with me, while others tell me it has helped them tremendously. Knowing that I don’t have to hide anymore has given me a greater sense of freedom. Can you imagine how wonderful that feels? My past no longer controls me, and my life unfolds in ways that often surprise me, but the most precious miracle of all is I know my Soul, and I are one.
Is your past controlling you? Do you avoid being alone with yourself? Are you uncomfortable in your skin? I know this way of existing all too well. I had hoped that if I denied my past, it would somehow go away, but that was a lie. When I stopped running and began to experience authentic integration, I felt free like never before. Integration is the gift that higher consciousness has given to humankind. Through the compassionate breath of our Soul, we can integrate those things which block us from our true selves.
When I first learned to integrate, I believed it was to get rid of the pain, the aspect of memory that I was struggling with so that I could feel better. But that is not what integration is about! True integration invigorates us, feeding our bodies a form of aliveness that enlightens us to our true identity. It feeds our life force and allows that belief or memory or aspect of pain to come home INTO THE GREATNESS OF WHO WE ARE! As we breathe this new breath of our Soul and feel, really feel the stillness that dwells within us, and we choose to integrate from love, we set ourselves free to discover the essence of our beings. But don’t be fooled; integration is not a quick fix, and no one can do it for you.
When you read my memoir, I Am Serena; you will understand how integration birthed me from the chaos of existing with over three hundred different personalities into the woman I am today. I invite you to discover what integration can bring to your life.
