In the Arena: Lessons on Growth from Italy

What does wandering the cobbled streets of Rome, standing in the shadow of the Colosseum, and navigating the beauty (and chaos!) of Cinque Terre have to do with healing after trauma? More than you might think !!

In this episode of Growing Tall Poppies, I share reflections from the final leg of my European journey — from the heat and hustle of Florence and Venice, to the awe-inspiring history of Rome, the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums. These travels offered powerful lessons about resilience, courage, and the willingness to “step into the arena” of life, even when it feels easier to stay on the sidelines.

Inside, you’ll discover:
 ✨ Why the Colosseum is more than a tourist attraction — it’s a metaphor for the courage required in post-traumatic growth.
 ✨ How cobblestone streets remind us of the uneven, sometimes messy path of healing.
 ✨ What travel teaches us about flexibility, patience, and finding meaning in both the beauty and the discomfort.
 ✨ Strategies you can use right now to step back into your own “arena,” with authenticity, courage, and heart.

Whether you’ve faced trauma, loss, or just life’s unexpected turns, this episode is an invitation to reflect, reset, and reimagine what’s possible when you choose growth over fear.

🎧 Tune in now and let Italy’s timeless wisdom inspire your journey.

If this episode resonates with you then I'd love for you to hit SUBSCRIBE so you can keep updated with each new episode as soon as it's released and we'd be most grateful if you would give us a RATING as well. You can also find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drnatgreen/ or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DrNatalieGreen

Intro and Outro music: Inspired Ambient by Playsound.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be deemed or treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Transcript

Dr Nat Green: 0:01

Welcome to the Growing Tall Poppies Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nat Green, and I'm so excited to have you join me as we discuss what it means to navigate your way through post-traumatic growth and not just survive, but to thrive after trauma. Through our podcast, we will explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater purpose, self-awareness, and a deep inner peace. Through integrating the many years of knowledge and professional experience, as well as the wisdom of those who have experienced trauma firsthand. We'll combine psychology accelerated approaches. Coaching and personal experience to assist you, to learn, to grow and to thrive. I hope to empower you to create deeper awareness and understanding and stronger connections with yourself and with others, whilst also paving the way for those who have experienced trauma and adversity to reduce their suffering and become the very best versions of themselves. In order to thrive. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. Hello, beautiful humans and welcome back to Growing Tall Poppies. I'm your host, Dr. Nat Green, and as I record this, I'm at the end of a truly unforgettable journey through Europe. As you know, I've been away for just on a month. Traveling with my family, enjoying the trip of a lifetime. And these past weeks have been a mix of all challenge, heat, exhaustion, beauty, and wonder. And as always, life has a way of weaving lessons into the places we visit, lessons that connect deeply to healing, growth, and living fully after trauma. And that's what I wanna share with you guys today. This week I wanna take you with me through the Italian part of our adventure through Florence, where we based ourselves for a week through Cinque Terre, where we did a day trip and it was so amazing to Venice Venezia, where we also did a day trip and into Roma where we spent the last five days. So I wanna share this with you, not as a travel guide, but as a journey of metaphor and of meaning. From cobblestone streets to the Colosseum, I've discovered reminders of what it takes to really step into the arena of life and choose growth even when it's hard. And my goodness, I know you guys know just how hard it is. So let's start with Florence. There was beauty, there was busyness, and at times overwhelm. If honest, Florence was beautiful. So much art, history, architecture everywhere, but it was also hot, crowded, and overwhelming at times. And it reminded me of something so many of us experience after we've been through trauma. Even when life is full of beauty and opportunities, it can still feel too much. And growth doesn't mean that we never feel overwhelmed. I want you to really know that we will still have those moments of overwhelm, and I experienced multiple moments like that in Florence. It means we give ourselves permission to step back, to breathe, and remember that we don't have to absorb everything all at once. There were times when we were out walking the streets and I was exhausted. My feet were hurting. In fact, they were burning and throbbing and I just had to go back to the room and rest. And that was okay. I gave myself permission to do that, and I didn't experience FOMO. Instead, I noticed that I was thrilled that I'd given myself that gift, knowing that I would be okay, and I would be able to show up and do more later in the day rather than be so exhausted that I couldn't do anything else for the next few days. So that was a really big learning, and I hope that that hits home for you too. So just like I couldn't see every piece of art in Florence, you don't need to carry or fix everything in your healing all at once. Sometimes it's about choosing one thing, one step, one foot forward, one moment, and letting that be enough. As I made my way through the streets of Florence. Really made me reflect on something so many of us experience after trauma. The balance between that beauty and that overwhelm, just like Florence life can be dazzling and exhausting at the same time. Most traumatic growth isn't about removing the overwhelm, but about learning how to ground yourself in the middle of it. To pause, to notice, to choose what to focus on. Rather than letting everything just crash over you. One small strategy I use that you could use too is when things felt too much, choose just one thing to notice deeply. For me, it was the detail in a fresco, all the unevenness of the cobblestone street. For you, it might be a sound, a color or even your breath. That one focus point can anchor you even in the busiest moments from Florence. As I said, we did a day trip to Cinque Terre. Five beautiful villages stacked along the coastline full of color and such character. The beauty is undeniable. What really struck me most was the sense of history that people have been building, rebuilding, and living there for centuries on cliffs that seem impossible to inhabit as a passer-by. It made me think about resilience and about how humans like those villages can survive and thrive in places that look uninhabitable. Trauma often feels like that. Like the ground is too unstable to build on, and yet given time, given patience and community, we find ways to not only live, but to create beauty. Cinque Terre stole another piece of my heart. These villages clinging to the cliffs connected by steep paths and train lines. In all but one, which was just by boat full of color and history. But they've stood the test of time because they are built on strong foundations. And that's exactly what healing and post-traumatic growth requires. The storms will come, the heat, the crowds, the hard days. But when you rebuild your life on solid foundations. Of self-awareness of resilience and support. You can stand tall just like the poppy that you were destined to be, just like those villages, no matter what life throws at you. The takeaway here is this. You may feel like your foundation is broken, but growth is always possible just like Cinque Terre. Your life can be rebuilt layer by layer until what once felt unlivable becomes not just survivable, but beautiful and a source of thriving for you. Then there was Venice. Venice is undoubtedly magical canals instead of roads, bridges everywhere. Life happening on the water. It reminded me of flow. Healing isn't linear as I know all of you know, just like the canals; growth take twists and turns, and sometimes you're on a gondola, gliding, peacefully. And other times you're navigating the crowds on a narrow bridge or on one of the ferries. Now, that was an experience. At one point, I honestly thought the boat was gonna tip over'cause it was so full and it freaked me out a little, to be honest. But the lesson is this, you don't have to force your healing in a straight line. You can let it meander. Trust the current, trust the people around you when you feel able to. And still arrive exactly where you are meant to be. As I mentioned, there are no cars in Venice, just boats and walkways. As you walk, you meander your way through around the canals. You have to let the water carry you, you have to adjust your pace, and that's exactly what healing asks of us to. We can't always force our way forward. Sometimes we have to surrender, trust the current and allow ourselves to be carried, even if it feels slower or more uncertain than we'd like. So here's the question I wanna leave you with from Venice. Where in your life do you need to stop forcing and start flowing? Give that some thought. And send me a message, DM me. I'd love to hear what came up for you. And then there's Rome. The last part of our trip has been spent in Rome with the cobblestone streets, and again, the heat and the significant crowds. We saw the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, the forum. The Roman Forum standing in those spaces, I just couldn't help but think about the metaphor of the arena. Brene Brown talks about that too. The courage it takes to step into the arena, to show up, to live fully, even when you risk failure, judgment, or falling and trauma can make us wanna stay on the sidelines where it just feels safer. But post-traumatic growth asks us to reenter the arena of life to try again, to love again, to dream again, and to risk again. And here's the truth. The arena isn't clean. It's messy, dusty, bloody, and so is healing. But just like those gladiators, just like the colosseum itself, still standing thousands of years later, your resilience leaves a legacy. Then there were the cobblestone streets, not just in Rome, but across Italy. Beautiful but uneven. Hard to walk on, really hard to walk on when you've got feet like mine. And isn't that the perfect picture of life after trauma? It's rarely smooth. Sometimes you trip and potentially fall, which did happen, and sometimes you get frustrated. Those cobblestones connect you to history, to stories, to people who walked before you in the same way that your healing path connects you to your own story, to others who've been through hardship and to the resilience that runs deeper than you think, and that's what this community in Growing Tall Poppies is all about. So please reach out, DM me, share. What this brings up for you and continue to be part of this amazing community. So as I wrap up this trip and this series of episodes from Europe, I wanna leave you with this:- Growth doesn't happen on the smooth, easy paths. It happens in the busyness of Florence, the steep foundations of Cinque Terre the flowing canals of Venice and the cobbled, uneven yet powerful arena of Rome. Your journey may feel messy. Heck, it will be messy, uneven, overwhelming, and unpredictable. But just like these places, there's beauty in the imperfection. And if you are willing to step back into the arena to keep walking those cobblestones, you'll discover a strength and freedom you may not have known was possible. You've got this. I know you have. There have been so many lessons, learnings from Europe, as I said, and it's been an absolute honor to share that raw, real, and vulnerable with all of you listeners, thank you for your beautiful messages and for continuing to listen. Thank you so much for being here with me. I hope these reflections give you something to hold onto in your own healing journey. And if this resonated, feel free to share it with someone who you know needs this reminder. So, as I close out this European journey, I wanna leave you with these four lessons. One from Florence. Anchor yourself in moments of overwhelm from Cinque Terre. You can rebuild beauty even on shaky ground from Venice. Surrender to the flow. Don't feel you have to force everything and from Rome, be willing to step into the arena of your own life. These lessons are not about travel alone. They're about living, healing and thriving. And I know that you are up for it. You're ready for it, and now is your time. They're about finding ways to grow. Even when the heat is intense, the crowds are pressing in or the ground feels unstable. Thank you for journeying with me on this trip, both physically and emotionally, and as I return home, I can't wait to continue walking this path of growth with you. I'll continue to share some videos that I've taken and lots of stuff on social media so that I can continue to. Live and relive my beautiful trip in Europe, and I hope that you enjoy that as well. So until next time, remember, growth is possible, beauty is waiting, and you are always braver than you believe. Thanks so much. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me in this episode of Growing Tall Poppies. It is my deepest hope that today's episode may have inspired and empowered you to step fully into your post-traumatic growth, so that you can have absolute clarity around who you are, what matters the most to you, and to assist you to release your negative emotions. And regulate your nervous system so you can fully thrive. New episodes are published every Tuesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we explore both the strategies and the personal qualities required to fully live a life of post-traumatic growth and to thrive. So if it feels aligned to you and really resonates, then I invite you to hit subscribe and it would mean the world to us. If you could share this episode with others who you feel may benefit too, you may also find me on Instagram at Growing Tall Poppies and Facebook, Dr. Natalie Green. Remember, every moment is an opportunity to look for the lessons and to learn and increase your ability to live the life you desire and deserve. So for now, stay connected. Stay inspired. Stand tall like the tall poppy you are, and keep shining your light brightly in the world. Bye for.