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People tell me all the time that I seem like such a together, joyful person. And I am — now. But for a long time, I was unable to leave my home for weeks at a time, too terrified to make eye contact with anyone. I had bought the lie that something was deeply wrong with me. Misinformation that had been taught to me in the name of protecting a family secret.
And what a secret it was.
I was raised Catholic by two Jewish Holocaust survivor parents. My father had changed our family name from Sigal to Sheridan and converted us all after he was nearly killed by an anti-Semite in a small Saskatchewan town in 1951. Every night, woken by his PTSD, he would rouse me from sleep and fill my ears with Holocaust stories — and with warnings. Tell anyone we are Jewish, he told me, and you will get us all killed.
I carried that secret everywhere. And it nearly broke me.
A Talent Paralyzed
By my mid-teens, I had already been accepted to major in theater. People called me wildly talented. And I was increasingly paralyzed.
I vacillated from being lucid and praised to frustrating directors and comedy club owners who simply didn't understand the complexity of my blocks. This was not just regular stage fright. I didn't yet have the language for what I was carrying: inherited, intergenerational PTSD — the transmission of unresolved trauma from parent to child, encoded not just in the stories told to me at 3 a.m. but in my nervous system itself.
I performed anyway. Stand-up comedy. Solo theater. Festival stages in front of hundreds, then thousands. And all the while, I was fighting what I now understand as a kind of psychic imprisonment. There were stretches where I was agoraphobic for weeks, unable to leave my apartment, unable to look a stranger in the eye. Even while performing stand-up comedy. The contradiction was, to put it mildly, exhausting.
The turning point came in 1995, when I made the audacious — some said reckless — decision to write and perform a full-length solo show about my family secret. Some family members caught wind of it and threatened to sue me. I moved ahead anyway, because I sensed it was a necessary step to release myself from psychic prison. The toxic secret was continuing to eat at me.
What happened the moment before I stepped onstage that night has never left me. I was shaking. Certain I was about to undo everything my parents had tried to protect. Then something shifted. I suddenly felt almost calm, and warm, as if I was being hugged from the inside. I knew — I just knew — it was my maternal grandmother's energy. She had been murdered on Kristallnacht in Bremen, Germany. It felt as if she was encouraging me to finally share the story.
Afterwards, people wouldn't leave the theatre. International press followed overnight. Cross-cultural communities struggling with questions of identity came backstage to tell me how my story had moved them. Healers told me my journey was helping others process their own intergenerational trauma. I had stepped into the terrifying dark and somehow found a door.
The Accidental Discovery
I've since published my memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Shiksa, and I co-own an Energy Healing Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, with my husband Dani. I teach internationally, lead workshops, and speak to paramedics, veterans, nurses, genocide survivors, and performers. But the technique I am perhaps best known for came to me entirely by accident.
I was meditating one morning and I found myself humming.
Initially I assumed my mind was just too busy. I tried to stop, to return to silent breath. But it was as if my body was led to hum — it felt so good. So I gave in and resumed. And then I started researching what my body seemed to already know.
Humming, it turns out, is an ancient practice still used by many indigenous communities, and a completely instinctive one for children, the elderly, and people living with Parkinson's, dementia, or Alzheimer's. The science backed up what I was feeling: a brief breath hold activates carbon dioxide, and humming activates nitric oxide. Together, they give us a powerful, portable way to regulate our own nervous systems — by ourselves, on demand.
I named the technique Frumming — a combination of my name, Frannie, and humming. I combined it with what I call Heart Hugs: placing a hand skin-to-skin over the heart while practicing the technique. Together, they became the foundation of what I now teach as Heart Homecoming — a way to journey out of urgency and back into peace.
And here's what I love most about it: you can do it silently in a bathroom, in your car, or yes, with both hands on the wheel of the L.A. freeway. Which is more than I can say for a sound bowl.
The testimonials have genuinely moved me. Blood pressure dropping up to 40 points. Chronic insomnia broken. Road rage dissolved. My own husband, who grew up in a war zone and lived in a constant state of emergency and urgency, was able to normalize his very high blood pressure through Frumming and Heart Hugs. Someone recently told me it had improved their golf game. I'll take it.
The In-Betweener
Here's something I say to every audience I speak to: many people benefit greatly from morning and evening meditation. But what happens in between? What happens when you're stuck in traffic? When financial stress catches up with you mid-afternoon? When you're sitting at a dinner party next to some shmuck?
That's where my proven processes come in. I call myself the In-Betweener.
My toolkit has grown well beyond Frumming. I've incorporated movement — I call it Shmoomba, which is essentially what you'd get if Zumba went to therapy and found its joy. I teach group rewiring exercises, gratitude practices I call Hooting in Thanks — because gratitude is magnetic and the highest form of receivership — and a healthy dose of the kind of playful irreverence that I've come to see as genuinely sacred.
I also want to be clear: my techniques are not a Tylenol. Just like going to the gym, the stress management muscle needs to be practiced. Think of it as going to the Soul Gym. The stakes, by the way, are not small. Techniques like these have stopped people from arguing in traffic — and road rage has been known to cause heart attacks, lead to violence, and land people in prison. So a small technique, but a gigantic soul-ution.
What I Know Now
I have, over the years, naturally healed myself from inherited PTSD, various cancers, and digestive issues. I believe my emotional realignment plays the central role in my wellbeing. And I know this: all emotional misalignment is simply love having forgotten who it is.
What seems to open hearts most, when I'm teaching, is when people realize I used to be unable to emotionally function. They say: "But you seem so joyful, so together." And then when they understand that I was once that paralyzed, and that these seemingly simple processes are what keep my rudder balanced — they commit. And they see results in their own lives.
Palliative care workers report, almost without exception, that the biggest regret people have at the end of their lives is that they wish they hadn't cared so much what others thought. That they would have done so much more. That lands on me every single time I hear it.
Today I have bookings through to 2028 — workshops, speaking engagements, stress management intensives, and audio book presentations. My audiobook memoir, I Tried to Be Normal But It Was Taken, will be available on ACX/Amazon in 2026, and it contains a great deal of never-before-shared material. The title is intentional. I want anyone who picks it up and feels skeptical about the power of something as simple as a hum to understand: I was once that skeptic. And I was also the person who couldn't leave her apartment.
My dream now is to share the stage with incredible musicians and artists — weaving humming, playfulness, and wisdom into their world. My intention is to keep giving people permission to reach for joy and kindness, with a generous sprinkle of silliness, and to stop handing their power over to external validation.
Because here is what I have remembered, after all of it — the Holocaust stories at 3 a.m., the agoraphobia, the threats, the stages, the healing: I am deeply loved. We all are. That is the central, ancient, timeless truth that children know the moment they arrive in the world, before anyone talks them out of it.
So every morning now, I wake up to upbeat music and I have what I call a Frannie Party. It's my way of saying: hey life, I have faith, certainty, and trust that even though I might not know exactly how things will unfold — I know I am loved. We are loved.
Now let's dance together into the day.
To explore Frannie Sheridan's healing work, visit lovinglightregeneration.com. Her audiobook, I Tried to Be Normal But It Was Taken, arrives on ACX/Amazon in 2026. For more of Frannie's signature blend of wisdom and wit, subscribe to her brand new YouTube channel, I Tried To Be Normal (but it was taken!), and connect with her on Facebook at @franniesheridan.
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