The past year and a half has been the most transformative of my life. I’ve stopped lying about my past & not only come to accept it, but learned to turn that pain into power, changing the question of “what happened to me?” Into, “What can I do with what happened to me?”
I’m now I’m able to help others heal and move forward from trauma and experiences that have held them back their entire life. I’m in a place of peace and happiness in my life, taking no shit from others and living exactly how I please.
Of course, this road hasn’t been without challenges. I’ve been viciously attacked, both by strangers & people close to me.
Here’s some things I’ve been called in the past year:
Narcissist
Liar
Pedophile sympathizer
Dangerous
Mentally ill
Needs electro therapy
Trying to get attention
Pathetic
Dumb/stupid
Brainwashed
Should be in jail
.... to name a few
I won’t lie and say these things haven’t hurt me. It’s awful to be targeted by strangers, & worse by people I know. But the good thing about healing is learning to accept not only all possible realities of yourself, but using it to your advantage. That's what shadow work is.
Shadow work involves going into the deepest, darkest places of yourself, and not just looking into it, but sitting with it, getting real comfortable with the uncomfort, until it just becomes a part of you.
These days if I’m bothered when people call me things, I know that on some level I must think it’s true. When you go into your shadow, accepting ALL possible realities of yourself, NOTHING anyone says about youwill bother you, because you know it’s not true, and you’ve already accepted that part of yourself anyway.
No one can touch you when you're in touch with your shadow side. Attacks are water off a duck’s back, & teflon to criticism. My new comfort zone is being uncomfortable. If I’m not there, I’m not growing. I’m going to push the envelope, cause a ruckus & evolve . That’s where I need to be and where I’ll stay
As Carl Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but making the darkness conscious.”
#shadowwork #acceptallpossiblerealities #theuncomfortablezone #livingwithpurpose #comeatmebro 😊
How I learned to listen to my body
This is a friendly PSA to all my ladies out there. I took this photo last week when I stepped into a gym for the 1st time in 2020. I've been traveling all year, first in Southeast Asia, then New Mexico and Texas. I haven’t done a single squat or crunch, and spent most of my time out hiking in nature with zero diet and workout regimens.
What I did do, was exactly what I wanted--traveling, being out in nature, eating food I loved, including a daily breakfast sandwich with sausage and cheese, or avocado toast with egg and salmon. I drank coffee when I wanted, and ate ice cream when I wanted.
Instead of blowing up and getting fat, my body just settled into its new life of zero restrictions, and she loved it.
I realized long ago that setting restrictions actually makes you crave things more, especially for those of us who've recovered from eating disorders. Now that everything is available to me, I'm kinda like, ehhh, no. I choose to eat healthy because that's what makes me feel good.
I'm back working out at the gym not because I "have" to, but because I genuinely enjoy it, especially my #sundaystretchday 😀
In my life I’ve been all over the weight scale. At 5’10 I’ve weighed 120 pounds & I’ve weighed 170. These days I have no idea how much I weigh, and I don’t care. I love my body, I treat it well. As long as I’m healthy that’s all that matters.
I still eat like crap sometimes, but I don’t punish myself for it. I go through the day of eating, then continue my life, remembering what makes me feel good, alive, happy, and what foods provide optimal performance.
Ladies, do what you love, not what feel you should do, while hating it the whole time. It’s scary at first living with no restrictions, eating whatever & giving up grueling workouts, but I promise you, after a time of balancing out your body will settle into its new life and thank you for it.
I’m 37 and I’m more confident, strong, and healthy than anytime in my 20s while modeling, or in my early 30s as a raw vegan. The secret? #norestrictions
Listen to your body. Take care of it like your life depends on it. When you stop punishing your body and start loving it, it will love you back 100x more.
Learning about love
Understanding what Love is releasing my hatred of the word.
Recently I learned more about what love is. I always thought Love was a tangible thing and something to be measured, like love for your friends, your family, etc.
I cringe when people say "love is all you need." This belief was forced on me in the cult, followed by beatings and abuse of all kinds. I was told this abuse was happening because that person loved me. I equated love with pain and ran from any love that didn't seem painful.
I thought I didn't know what love meant as I'm not married, I don't have kids, so I felt my love was stunted. I resigned myself to the fact that I may never know real love, based on the above assessment. But these are all conditional things like desire, passion, allure, infatuation, all of which fades.
But love is so much more than that.
Love is in everything around us. The air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the stick on the ground, the leaf on the tree. Love is in you, me, and everyone, because we are all love and love is all of us. It's unconditional and unchanging. The painful and the joyful, there is love in everything, we just have to choose it.
If we all chose love, there would be no more suffering, only peace. But you have to always choose to return to love, and that's hard part. Choosing love is so much harder than choosing hate and wanting others to suffer like you do. But in the end, everyone wants love, and everyone wants peace. So why not choose that path?
These days I'm choosing to see things differently. I'm choosing to return to love, again and again.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
--Jimi Hendrix
When do you feel most free and like yourself?
When I was in New Mexico away from people, cities, politics, and distractions, it allowed me to figure out who I was, when I most felt like myself, what made me come alive and most importantly, when I felt most connected to my higher self.
There are always areas in our lives where we shine, when we feel most connected and most like ourselves. For me, that's being out in nature without anyone else around. The feeling of total freedom, being connected to mother earth, completely unafraid of anything, is the most profound feeling ever. I thought I was alive before, but I didn't really know what that meant until got rid of all the things I thought I needed to feel that way.
We're all different, and we connect to our deepest self and our hearts in all kinds of ways. I'm curious to hear from all of you: what makes you feel most alive? When do you feel most connected to your highest self? When do you feel most inspired and what contributes to that inspiration? Let me know in the comments below!
Society's skewed version of sexuality
I'm seeing a lot of comments on social media that are, surprisingly but also maybe not surprisingly--almost mocking the fact that Netflix was indicted by the grand jury in Texas for the lewd depiction of children in the show Cuties. People are saying it's not that bad, this is all due to conspiracy theorists and getting blown way out of proportion.
Interestingly enough, some of these people are the ones criticizing me and others for having nudity on their page. Let's just pause for a sec at these ridiculous contradictions and the hypocrisy of it all...
Newsflash! The sexualization of children is NOT normal. Images and film depicting "cute kids" in "cute outfits", shaking their butts and twerking on stage at 9 years old is NOT ok and there are NO circumstances where this is appropriate.
Guess what is normal? A 37 yr old woman who knows herself, doesn't stand for people's bullshit, who is proud of & celebrates her body in its natural form, who has gone through horrendous amounts of sexual abuse and trauma, only to come out the other side perfectly healed with a healthy sense of sexuality, showing off her body in an artful way on social media, just the way she wants to. Shocking? Maybe to some, but certainly not wrong.
I can't believe the state of the world sometimes and its skewed view on sexuality. How anyone can think that a grown woman posting beautiful photos on social media is not OK, while a disgusting show on Netflix with underage twerking children is fine, is beyond me. Something normal and natural like images of women showing their bodies or nursing their children, are censored online all the time, while the sexualization of children remains all over TV and Social Media. Guys, we can do so much better as a nation and so much better together.
Your reaction to other people's actions and what they're doing with their lives says far more about you than the other person. I would suggest we all examine our morals, our beliefs, and our thoughts to see where they are coming from and how they are being influenced. What you find may surprise you.
#nudaisnormal #nakedinnature #sereneearth #skewedperspective #cancelcuties #childabuseawareness #bodybyhiking
Accepting the things I cannot change...about myself
I've learned to accept something about myself recently, which is I cannot make up my mind about anything until the last minute. It's not that I make bad choices, but decision making literally gives me anxiety. I think waaaay too much about the consequences of each choice and construct huge stories far into the future about what could happen with each decision. Because of that it stresses me out and makes me a bit neurotic.
I've been trying to figure out the next steps for my life now for months and I'm just realizing that I'm not super into long term planning, much less making plans and sticking to it. When you give people your word and back out, that's breaking promises to yourself and reinforcing beliefs that you can't reach goals because you never follow through. So unless I'm serious about a plan, I'll either say no or leave it at a "maybe" until the last minute.
I used to think that this was a horrible quality and I'm sure that's true for some people, but I realized that as an air sign, like the air I will always change direction, I will always change course, and I will always change my mind. Now that I'm cool with that, I feel like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Also realizing my decisions are not wrong, they're just last minute ;)
I used to hate when people would ask at a job interview or in general what my five or 10 year plan is. I would panic and think, "that sounds awful, I literally have no idea what I’m doing in the next month, much less in five or 10 years because my plan is going to change 50,000 times before that!"
Now I realize it’s perfectly fine not to have a five or 10 year plan because they never go according to plan anyway.
Your plan is not the Universe's plans. The less attached you are to specific plans or outcomes, the more flexible you'll be and less chaotic you'll feel when all your plans fall through.
Understanding this for me means I can go where I'm meant at the last minute, change my plans whenever I want and not freak out when nothing works out. There's always a better way, I just need to accept, go with the flow, and find it.
Who else feels this way? Let me know in the comments below 👇