What happens when trauma stays buried for decades? In this deeply raw and powerful conversation, Lindsie sits down with Tracy Smaldino, who shares her extraordinary story of survival, suppression, and ultimately healing. At just 12 years old, Tracy survived a catastrophic car accident that left her with burns over 70% of her body and took the lives of her two cousins. Only a few years later, she experienced another devastating trauma — a sexual assault she kept secret for more than 40 years. For decades, Tracy pushed forward, building a life and career while unknowingly carrying layers of unresolved trauma in her nervous system. Anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and instability quietly shaped her choices and relationships. Everything began to shift when Tracy discovered meditation, which opened the door to deeper healing. Her journey eventually led her to explore modalities like MDMA-assisted therapy, hypnosis, journaling, and nervous system work, allowing her to confront suppressed memories and find something she never expected — self-forgiveness. In this episode, we explore how trauma impacts the nervous system, why suppressed experiences can shape our lives in ways we don’t realize, and why healing often begins the moment we decide to face ourselves with compassion. Tracy’s story is proof that no matter how much time has passed, it is never too late to heal.
Share this episode with someone who needs the reminder that healing is always possible — no matter how much time has passed.
(0:00 - 1:45) I remember I just kept saying I've wasted so much time. Now that I know this and I can see this and I can see who I am and who I want to be and what my purpose is like I wasted all these years and I really had to forgive myself for that because I again being the hard person I am it all made sense. Hey beautiful, welcome back to PCOS unfiltered. I'm Lindsie, former ER nurse turned health coach and author of Healing Beyond the Diagnosis. Today's episode is raw, it's honest and it's deeply powerful. If you've ever wondered what happens when trauma is suppressed for decades, how unprocessed experiences shape our nervous system, our relationships, even our physical health or whether it's ever too late to heal, this conversation is for you. Today I'm joined by Tracy Smaldino, survivor of a horrific childhood auto accident where she was the only one to live, burned over 70% of her body and years later a survivor of sexual assault that she kept secret for over 40 years. For decades Tracy carried suppressed trauma in her nervous system, she pushed forward, she built a life, she worked in high energy environments but internally something never felt settled. In this episode we talk about what suppressed trauma actually does to the body, survivor's guilt and nervous system shutdown, anxiety, hypervigilance and living on edge, meditation as the doorway to healing, MDMA assisted therapy and hypnosis as tools for accessing the subconscious and the moment she realized she had to forgive herself.
(1:46 - 7:30) This isn't just a trauma story, it's a story about reclaiming identity, regulating the nervous system and becoming your own hero and if today's conversation resonates with you especially around nervous system regulation and self-leadership, stay tuned at the end because I'll be sharing details about my live workshop on March 15th that ties directly into this work in a practical grounded way. As a reminder, the content shared on PCOS Unfiltered is for informational and educational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are not intended to serve as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your diet, exercise or treatment plan. The information shared is based on personal experience and expert interviews and is not a substitute for professional medical guidance. All right, let's go there. Here's my conversation with Tracy Smaldino. Welcome and welcome to Tracy. Super excited to have you here. Yeah, I think this, we could probably go deep in this episode so we're gonna see where it lands but first just I want you to share your story. I mean you have a very, very powerful story. And so yeah, let's just start there. Why are you here? Let's have it unfiltered, right? Yeah, Lindsay, thanks so much for having me on. It's an honor to be on this amazing podcast that you have and you know a little bit to go back to my story. I'll give you the high level of it and then you can kind of just jump in if you have any questions because I just, I don't want to ramble on and on and I can tend to do that. But back a long time ago when I was 12 years old, I was in a horrific auto accident. I was actually the only survivor of an auto accident. Both my cousins passed away and I was burned on 70% of my body, second and third degree burns. And you know, it's funny because when, I don't know if anybody's ever, you know, understands with burns, you go into the hospital and you go through months and months of skin grafts and surgeries and treatment and healing and then they let you go home and then that's where actually your journey begins is once you get out of there and you get home. And because you have such a team taking care of you, you don't really have, all you need to worry about is getting better. And it was so difficult because there was so much pain involved, like physical pain, and I was in a coma for two weeks. And when the auto accident actually happened, I hit my head and we got hit from behind and the car blew up. And ironically, back in those days, like people really weren't wearing seatbelts. If I had had my seatbelt on, I would have been trapped in the car. So that was one of those rare statistical blessings that I wasn't. But I hit my head, so I was in a coma. And then when I came out, I didn't even know my own name. I had to learn how to read, write, walk, talk. I couldn't even talk. I had aphasia. So you being with your nursing background, you understand all of this. Like I had to learn how to basically do everything all over again, let alone heal. And it was a really tough journey. I spent, imagine being 12, you're getting into your adolescence and you just want to be a kid and have a teenage life. And it was really difficult, but I'm so grateful because I had a lot of my surgery and recovery with Shriners Hospitals. And so I would go for like six weeks increments with Shriners. And they're such an amazing, magical place. And I would go to have surgery. And then my teachers would send me six weeks or two months worth of schoolwork. So I would go there and then I'd go back home and then I'd go for another six week round. And it was terrible. I went through this for years with surgeries and everything, but I mean, Shriners, I just, I can't talk enough about them. They're such a magical place and for my family and everything. But I was able to get through all of that, but I got through the healing part of it. I didn't really get through the emotional part of it. I just don't back then, this was in the early eighties, not to age myself, but this was in the early eighties. And we weren't talking about a lot of mental health issues and trauma and what it does to our nervous systems and how it just basically shuts down our whole body. And so it was very difficult. Like I never felt like there was anybody that could help me on the emotional side of things back then. I did go to counseling, like my parents would have me go to therapy and to counseling, but it just, it never worked for me personally. I just, I never felt, and I don't know if it's because like nowadays it would probably be different because people are so much more informed with trauma now and so much more open to talk about it.
(7:30 - 9:03) But I just never felt back then that it helped. I just felt like we were talking in circles and I wasn't being heard. I wasn't being understood. Nobody really knew what I needed. So it was really tough. And let alone having to deal with being a teenager and going through puberty and, and all that, that's just adds another layer to everything. So I tried to live as normal of a adolescent high school life as I could, but there was another plan. When I was 15, I was with my friends and we went to a high school party like you do when you're 15, but you know, unfortunately you never know who's going to be there and what's going on. And at this party, I was drugged and gang raped by several boys. So on top of having to deal with everything with my accident, this happened. Well, when I had had my auto accident, it was a very, very high profile event. And it was in this, it wasn't where I live now, but it was in a different state. And I still believe to this day, it's still the third worst accident in the history of the state. And every, it was all over the news and there were every year on the anniversary, they would air the act, you know, air the accident again. And it was just, it was such a high profile thing that when, and I actually went to a very high profile high school on top of everything.
(9:03 - 14:34) So when my assault happened, when I was 15 years old, the last thing I wanted was to be around the police and media. And I had already had all of that dealing with my accident and just trying to survive that. So I just suppressed it. I never told, when that assault happened, I never told a soul because I felt like my parents were going to pull me out of school. Where am I, where would I go to school? There wasn't homeschooling back then. I didn't want, and I knew being that it was the very high profile high school that I went to, it would be all over the, it would be all over the news. The police would be involved. And I just didn't want that for myself. And I literally, everybody knew about my accident, but nobody knew about the assault. I suppressed that for over 40 years. I just the past year for the first time have been open to talk about this. And that was a huge part of my healing journey. I never even told my parents. I just told my parents and my brother about it in June of last year. That was the first time. And my, my boyfriend that I have now, he, he was the one that I really confided in and told him about it. And I knew that I really needed to come out about it and let everybody know about it for me to fully heal. And that was a huge part of everything because not only, you know, with my, with my auto accident had, I've been suppressing that for so many years because I never got the help I needed. I had this whole other layer from this assault that happened. I'm like, and I just, I knew something had to change. And this was about five years ago that I started really taking a deep dive and knowing that I had a lot of work to do internally. And so I really, the, the real thing that helped me start, even start beginning my healing journey was, sorry, I'm just drawing a blank for some reason, but it was meditation. I started randomly meditating, just guided meditations off YouTube about five years ago. And when I really committed to that and I started doing it regularly, I started getting downloads of information and boy, you talk about suppressing trauma for 40 something years. It came down on me like a ton of bricks. It came down on me hard, but I knew the reason it did that is because I was on the right path. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so, yeah. So I I'm like, all right, I'm going all in. I I've gotta, I've gotta do what I need to do. I gotta do it for myself and and get past this and just be the best person that I can be for the people that I choose to have in my life and my family and my parents and my brother and you know, everyone, my niece and nephew and even my dogs, you know, they feed off your energy too. And so it, it's been a five year path. Like, let me just say, and it's, it hasn't been easy, but it hasn't been, I kept saying to myself, like what I've already been through, I can handle, I can handle it. You know, I can handle all of this. And so last year, early last year, I started reading this book and I knew everybody was like, this is, you gotta read this book. It's great. New York times bestseller. I had no idea what this book was about, but I bought it. I was going on vacation. So I bought this book to read. Well, the book ended up being this author ended up being sexually assaulted when she was about the same age I was by a teacher that she had trusted. And her whole journey was how she had suppressed it for four years, same, same thing. And what really got her past her healing journey was she learned about MDMA therapy. And are you familiar with MDMA? Only because we talked once before. So MDMA, yeah, people I'm sure people are so like, there's so many different modalities, you know, and there's, there's, you know, mushrooms, for instance, people are doing mushrooms hypnosis, like the psychedelics or MDMA. When I first read about it in her book, I could have fallen over when I first read about it, because something in my heart just told me, I need to do this. This is something that I need to do. And, and so I did a ton of research because I'm like, if I'm if I'm thinking about doing this, I go down a huge rabbit hole. So I literally researched for months, because I wanted to make sure I fully understood what it was. And the biggest thing with MDMA is you really need to be with, you know, a provider that you trust that can guide you through and it's very important because you don't want to retraumatize yourself. But I did a lot of research and I found a therapy center near where I live that offers it.
(14:35 - 19:47) And so I went, I talked to the, the psychologist that runs this therapy center, and I had to do my intake, a lot of back and forth conversations, I had to give all my information to see if she even felt that MDMA would be a good fit for me. So what MDMA is, for people that are listening that don't know, it's the, it's a micro dose, it's the key ingredient that's in ecstasy. But it's not the street drug. So I don't want people to think that it's, you know, it's the street drug that's out there, what it is, is this key ingredient, they give you a tiny micro dose of it. And what it does is it just it, it kind of gives you a clean slate, it opens up your your subconscious. So you can see like my session was four hours with her when I did this. And what it does is it help has you look at things through a lens of love and respect and, and care. And there's no hatred or anger or anything, you look at it through just this beautiful lens that you probably in your conscious mind wouldn't look through. Going into it, you don't know what's going to come out, because it's your subconscious. So I had done so much research and reflecting on it that I knew I could handle it. So whatever came out, I was ready for it. Because like, I don't remember my car accident because of my head injury. And what happened to my cousins, you know, who passed away, and even the assault, I don't remember because of the I was drugged. So I didn't know what was going to come out. But I'm like, you know what, what is meant for me to see I'm going to see, and I'm ready for it. And I can handle it because I've been through all of this already. And it was the experience was the most beautiful, unbelievable experience. It was truly a gift. And you know, when you go through trauma, it you completely shut your nervous system shuts down. And what this did is it was literally a light switch, it turned everything back on all those happy chemicals in my body. And just like, I'm, I'm not feel like I'm living on edge, or you know, all the time anymore. And I had this in May of last year, and it has not changed. Like I still feel the exact same as I felt the day of my treatment. And that light switch state has stayed on. And that's just one, I just went through one, I you know, I was thinking about maybe doing another one, because now that I I've seen what I've seen, I would love to dig deeper, because I just really want to really get to know myself and to the core as deep as I can go. But it was such a beautiful experience. And it's not for everybody, you know, and I, you, it was so funny, because I was when I was driving there. I was so nervous. It was like, you know, when you go on a roller coaster, you're nervous, but you're excited kind of thing. It was the exact same feeling. And we were running late, we couldn't find parking. So by the time I got there, and my therapist, Ali, she's been on my podcast, and it was an amazing episode. But by the time I got there, we're running so late. She's like, here you go. She was like holding the pill, I didn't have time to chicken out. So she was holding the medicine. And I'm like, okay, I took it, and I swallowed it. And I was like, oh, crap. Well, there's there's no turning back now. I've got to do this now. But it was so the way it all happened. And my boyfriend drove me because obviously, I wasn't able to drive home because I was still I still had the medicine in me. But it was such an incredible opportunity and to be able to see things and the one thing that I'm really hard on myself, I always have been and I don't know if it's because of the trauma, I just am so, so hard on myself. And the one thing that really stood out in the MDMA session was that I needed to find the strength to forgive myself. Because I had spent all these years completely clueless, not knowing who I was as a person, what my purpose was, the type of person I wanted to be. Can you hear my dog barking? Okay, good. Because he's driving me crazy right now. Um, you can edit that out. But the type of person that I wanted to be and I look back at, you know, another thing you're you're probably aware is people that go through trauma. They want to they move a lot. A lot of people that have been through trauma move a lot and they they like to live in big loud cities and have like it because what it does is it takes away the attention from having to deal with your trauma and deal with that.
(19:47 - 24:39) Well, guess what? I worked in the music industry. I lived in Vegas. I lived in LA. I lived in New York. I you couldn't in working in the music industry, you couldn't have picked a more perfect profession for me to live in this loud life to help mask all the crap that I needed to be facing. It was it was the perfect storm. And, and I did I moved a lot like I never felt stable. I never felt secure. And I look back at like the choices that I made the people that I would allow into my life and in my circle, whether it was a friendship or a partner or or even crap you put up with from coworkers, you know, thing, everything. It was all related to my trauma, all of it. It all made complete sense. And I remember I just kept saying I've wasted so much time now that I know this and I can see this and I can see who I am and who I want to be and what my purpose is. Like I, I wasted all these years and I really had to forgive myself for that because I, again, being the hard person I am, it all made sense that it not none of it was done intentionally or maliciously or it was just how I coped at the time. So I really come to peace with that. And I've really started journaling and on the past few years, and I really talk a lot about that to myself in my journal about just that self-love and and forgiveness. And I but, you know, OK, so that was 40 years. I got the next 40 years now. And so I really that's why I started Trauma Rockstars podcast, and that's where I got the name Trauma Rockstars, because I worked in the music business and and I started the podcast, but I really wanted to go through my MDMA journey first before I launched the podcast because I really wanted to be able to speak to that because I'm sure a lot of people and I know people are doing psychedelics and there's hypnosis. I actually just did a hypnosis therapy last weekend that was incredible. It was incredible last weekend. I, I treated myself for kind of like for the new year and and everything. I treated myself to it and it was really, really incredible. I had some amazing like aha moments during the the hypnosis session and everything. And that's how I am now, like now that I see what the what how deep I can go and how much I can find out about myself and and stuff like that. I never would have been able to do that if I didn't get to get past to the other side of this trauma journey and the recovery. Yeah. I mean, you said so a lot of good things in there, but yeah, but just that I can handle it. Peace. I think it's super important to, you know, as you're sharing your story and I've had other, you know, other guests on that share their stories and sure they're not PCOS specific, but I think it's still very relatable. And then also just knowing that, that yes, there is hope out there. You can handle this and saying that to yourself as well. You know, that's super important. How did it kind of manifest for you, you know, in that like 40 year, you know, time span, you know, you kind of mentioned, like, were you able to just completely drawn it out? Or did you still have bouts of like anxiety or, you know? Yeah. Like how did that kind manifest throughout that time? I look back now and I am, I don't even know who that person was, to be honest. I, I had so much, I, I never, I wouldn't say that I was depressed. I never got diagnosed with depression, but I had a lot of anxiety and I, I did, I did have depression moments because I think we all do like, and like, we have things that put us down, make us down and, and we can be depressed. I had those moments, but for me it was anxiety, but so much so that I was like, I was very high strung, very on edge, very, you know, I don't give a shit about the world. I'm going to do what I want to do and, and not, you know, not really, I didn't really want to face anything in, in the mirror. You know, I didn't realize back then how important the energy is we're projecting out into the world. (24:40 - 25:29) That takes a toll on you. So be very careful with what energy you choose to put out there, because it's going to mirror back to you. And now I get it. Now I get why, you know, I had, I attracted certain people in my life and I had certain friendships and relationships and things like that because it was actually a reflection of how deep down in my subconscious, I didn't realize how insecure I was, how I hadn't faced my trauma, how I had been living 40 years of survivor's guilt, you know, from my accident, you know, my, my cousins didn't deserve to, to, to die. You know, they didn't deserve that. So I lived with survivor's guilt for, so I never realized that. (25:29 - 26:30) And now that I have the full big picture of it, and I, I still am an avid believer in meditation because you can get all the answers you need. You really can. And I think I needed that extra push with the MDMA therapy because I just really didn't, I'm the kind of person, like I didn't want to sit in front and I don't think there's anything wrong with therapy and counseling. I, I'm not, it's helped so many people. It just didn't work for me. And I didn't want to have to spend another three, six months, year in front of a therapist, talking circles. I just want to get to get, I'm straight to the point, you know, kind of person. And so I knew with the MDMA, I was able to do that. But now that I've seen what I've seen with the MDMA and with that hypnosis session I had last weekend, even, I I'm seeing so much more now through my meditation practice.
(26:31 - 28:36) And you can ask and you'll get those answers delivered to you now. And I can see that where I don't think I would have been able to before if I hadn't had that huge push. This conversation, Tracy's story is a reminder of something I say often, symptoms don't come out of nowhere. They're messengers. So whether it's anxiety, hormonal chaos, debilitating cycles, sleep disruption, or just feeling constantly on edge, your nervous system keeps score. And what I loved most about Tracy's story. Wasn't just the trauma she'd survived. It was the moment she decided I can handle this. I deserve clarity. I'm ready to meet myself fully. That shift alone changes everything. Healing doesn't have to look one specific way for Tracy. It included meditation and MDMA assisted therapy, hypnosis, journaling, hormone support, breath work. For someone else, it might be talk therapy, somatic work, tapping, nervous system regulation, coaching, but the common thread, you cannot bypass the nervous system and expect the body to feel safe. And that leads perfectly into what I'm next. If today's episode made you realize how much your nervous system drives your choices, especially around food stress or self-sabotage, this workshop is for you inside from mindful to mindful. We're not just talking about mindful eating in theory. We're learning how to regulate your nervous system before making food decisions, identify what kind of hunger is actually driving you, maybe physical, emotional, or stress-based and create simple rhythms that stabilize blood sugar and hormones. This is where mindset meets metabolism because consistency isn't about discipline. It's about safety. Then when your body feels safe, change sticks. You can register through the link in the show notes. We are going deep, but in a grounded, practical way, you can actually apply. I hope to see you on March 15th at noon Eastern for our live workshop.
(28:37 - 29:02) Now, lastly, if you loved today's episode, share it with someone who needs to hear that it's not too late to heal. And if Tracy's story moved you connect with her at trauma rock stars on all platforms links in the show notes and let her know what resonated. All right, friend, I'm sending you so much love until next time, nourish your body, heal from the inside out and thrive like the best you are. You got this.