We were lucky to catch up with Trina Zaragoza recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Trina, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from a lifelong relationship with both service and survival.
As a registered nurse and holistic practitioner, I’ve stood at the intersection of crisis and care for over two decades. I’ve worked with people at their most vulnerable in hospice, homes, and healing rooms, and every time, I’ve been reminded that resilience isn’t just about pushing through. It’s about returning to yourself, again and again.
My journey has been shaped not only by what I’ve done professionally, but by what I’ve had to walk through personally. I’ve navigated grief and loss, faced health challenges that redefined my relationship to the body, and moved through the deep identity transformation that motherhood brings. There was also a moment of complete unraveling, a kind of ego death, where everything I thought I was fell away, and I was left with only my values and my willingness to begin again.
What I’ve learned is that true resilience isn’t rooted in certainty or control. It lives in devotion, devotion to your values, to your purpose, to the people you’re here to serve. It means staying when things are uncomfortable, listening when there are no answers. And trusting that even when the path isn’t clear, the presence you bring to it still matters.
Today, I blend my clinical background with somatic and intuitive practices to support others in their healing journeys. I specialize in nervous system regulation, energy recalibration, and restorative care, often for people who are themselves in service roles and need a place to land. Whether I’m guiding a grief ceremony, teaching integrative health, or simply holding space for someone in transition, my resilience shows up not as toughness, but as presence.
I don’t try to fix people. I don’t fix. I companion. I listen when the ground shifts beneath them, because I’ve lived those earthquakes too.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m the founder of Altered Haven, a space dedicated to integrative healing and nervous system support for individuals navigating transitions, burnout, grief, or soul-level reawakening.
With a background as a registered nurse, National Board-certified wellness coach, Clinical skills instructor at RRCC, Reiki Master, and holistic practitioner, my work combines clinical understanding with body-based energy healing, intuitive care, and ritual-based restoration. I specialize in helping people regulate, recalibrate, and reconnect with their core self, not by fixing what’s “broken,” but by remembering what’s still whole. I offer one-on-one healing sessions, light channeling, intuitive wellness support, and ceremony-based experiences. Each session is individualized, body-informed, and rooted in over 20 years of experience in both clinical and energetic care.
Clients often come to me when they’re overwhelmed, depleted, or in the midst of deep personal change. What I offer isn’t a formula, it’s a space. A space where they can breathe again, remember who they are, and reconnect with what’s true beneath the pressure of performance and productivity. Each session draws from a lineage of sound, presence, and remembrance, inviting people back to their own knowing.
In addition to client work, I also support wellness professionals through integrative training, including exam preparation and intuitive business mentorship.
At Altered Haven, I’m committed to creating healing that’s both sacred and sustainable, work that doesn’t bypass the human, but honors it.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back, I’d say the three most impactful elements in my journey have been: emotional attunement, nervous system awareness, and intuitive trust.
Emotional attunement the ability to be present with what someone is feeling, even when they don’t have words for it is something I developed not just in my clinical work, but through my own lived experiences of loss, grief, and transformation. It taught me to listen beyond the surface. To pause. To allow space.
Nervous system awareness came later, but it changed everything. Once I understood how stress, trauma, and overwhelm affect the body, not just the mind, I stopped trying to “fix” people. I started helping them find stability from the inside out. This is a foundational piece in all of my client work now, and it’s something I believe should be core in any healing profession.
Intuitive trust was the slowest to develop because it required me to stop outsourcing my authority. It meant learning how to listen to what I knew, even when it didn’t look like what others were doing. That’s what helped me step into my own way of serving others. Not by replicating systems but by creating a path that was actually aligned with who I am.
If you’re early in your journey, my advice is to start by slowing down. So much of healing work isn’t about doing more, it’s about creating the internal space to actually hear what your body, your heart, and your environment are telling you. Learn how your nervous system speaks. Learn how your intuition whispers. And don’t rush to define your path too soon. You’re not behind you’re becoming.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
Over the past year, my biggest area of growth has been learning how to incorporate rest into my leadership.
For so long, I believed I had to hold everything together all the time to be available, responsive, and strong. But this past year taught me that holding space doesn’t mean constantly carrying it. I’ve been learning to regulate from within, to pause before responding, and to stop over-giving out of habit. That shift has completely changed how I show up for my clients, my loved ones, and myself.
This growth didn’t happen in a retreat or from a book; it happened in the day-to-day moments where I chose presence over pressure. I’ve redefined what “doing enough” means and have started designing my offerings in a way that supports both my clients and my own well-being.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alteredhaven.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alteredhaven/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alteredhaven333
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trina-zaragoza-3564b09/
Image Credits
These are all mine
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
