Finding body peace allowed me space to love others more…
10 years, 11 months and 17 days ago I know exactly where / was.
It was the day I decided I was no longer going to slander my body.
I sat staring out at the ocean and realised I needed to stop waiting for other people to give me approval. It was the epiphany that nowhere would I feel safe if I was constantly attacking myself.
It was my final night away from a life-changing trip, and life would move at me pretty fast for the next few years.
I had gone out to Nepal to volunteer with an anti-trafficking charity I would be invited to the board of six months later, I would return to London, with my newfound confidence, only to be attacked weeks later in an incident which left me hospitalised and by the end of the year I would become a fulltime carer for the second time in my life.
When I took this photograph, I thought everything would change with this moment.
I felt like I finally had the answer I had been seeking, and from now on, things were going to be plain sailing.
And despite the following years being some of the hardest of my life, that moment is still etched into me as the first time I believed good things could be possible for someone like me. It was the first time I looked at myself with compassion. It was the first time I realised that being hard on myself was only taking me further away from my values not closer to achieving them.
I think long and hard about what to share with you in these weekly messages, and this week, I decided to peel back a few layers and show you the precise moment I thought I had found the answer to the universe and then, for a while my life turned into a train wreck.
Because this moment stayed with me. For a while, I believed my confidence had lured a predator and for a while I was scared of my own shadow, but something about the light of possibility kept drawing me back to the knowledge that the more kindness I show myself, the more kindness there is in the world, it cannot possibly be any other way.
It was from here seeds began to grow. Seeds of stopping telling people I just took too many photographs and owning that I dreamed of being a photographer, remembering how much I loved writing and telling stories, the seedling ideas for how the cross-over between dance and circus could help people feel their way back to their bodies and the calling to be a counsellor I had since (in the end I switched my counselling training halfway through to train to become a coach). This all bloomed as the fires were lit around me in those years because I believed something possible for myself. Becuase I created space where there had once only been poison.
And slowly, slowly, I rebuild again and and grew and flourished and had it all burnt to the ground a few times more, but each time, the muscle memory of bringing myself back to love becomes stronger. And I see where I need to get to, rather than what I want to sabotage.
And I wonder where this resonates for you. Do you have a cracking your chest wide open to let the love in moment? And would you like to stretch your heart wider for all life has to teach you and to see how much you can love in this life time? And if not, where will you be in nine years, 11 months and 17 days? What will life look like for you if you do not make the decision to be more kind to yourself? Do you like where you are heading without giving yourself more grace? And would you like to change that?
Some years later, on a train, I met a 16-year-old who gave me some of the best love advice of my life. She told me “Whenever I have my heart broken..” (I was immediately judgemental – the kid was 16) “I always think I will never love like that again, and in truth, whenever I begin a new relationship, I begin from the place I left off, as that is the amount I have learnt to stretch my heart to.”. I think if her words often.
www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk is here for you, if you want to begin to transform your relationship with yourself, with love and to learn new ways to let the love in. It is soul work for me and creating such a special corner of growth, love and self-compassion on the internet has been one of the most important things I have ever done in my life.
If you want to thread more love into your future, I would love to welcome you inside. Wherever you are starting from. There is a full wage fee, a concession fee and free spaces for folk who need them. No one is ever turned away for financial reasons.
Valentine’s Day can be tricky and muddled with obligation for a lot of folk. So today I wanted to tell you the story of the greatest love story of my life: the day I chose to stop being cruel to myself.
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