This is the story of a Girl

THIS IS THE STORY OF AN ORDINARY GIRL

MY BODY, MY BATTLE

HAVE YOU HAVE HAD THE FEELING THAT YOU WERE NOT IN THE RIGHT BODY?

TO NOT BE STANDING IN YOUR FULL NATURAL ESSENCE?

Have you ever had the feeling or have the feeling that you are burying, hiding who you are?

Let me explain …..

As a young girl I was always  a bit “too big” in all senses of the word – too tall, too large, too much. I always felt a bit different, I spoke loudly, I was always loud, always “too much”. I never felt like I looked like or acted like the other “little girls”. 

I went o my ballet class just like the other girls and just like them dreamt of being a ballet dancer on the big stage, graceful and full of light elegance. In my head I was that beautiful ballet dancer, the reality was very different.

Ballet dancer in the skin of a “big fat cow”!

As a young girl I read a book called “Clumsy Clara”…. An extremely clumsy young girl. One day she finds fairies in her garden as she is about to step on their homes the fairies cry out for her to stop. With their help she learns how to walk on tip toes, pay attention to her surroundings and walk with grace, lightness and ease in between their homes. I never felt I reached that second step I just always had the impression I was stomping all over everything. And Grace? Ooffff very little in my body and gestures.

Considering my size (or at least the size I felt), my clumsiness and my huge booming voice I spent many long years with the Clumsy Clara image as my “friend” – or as a girls called me at school – “you BIG FAT COW”!

GOOD GIRLS V/S BAD GIRLS

At the same time as being under the impression of being the skin of someone else, I felt quite sincerely that I was not the “model child” everyone wanted me to be but that I didn’t and that I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to live.

There were so many socially acceptable rules, ways of being, pretending, doing the right thing, especially when in “polite company”. I often found myself confronted by major difficulties and constantly the feeling that I was acting and hiding my deeper, true feelings, my identity. The feeling that I was swallowing who I was and not to be living my true nature.

A little bit like in the film Brave – and yes despite the hair colour I am exactly like her, wanting to live freely, riding on my horse through the forest! My mother always used to say I should be polite, quiet, respectful, clean, never show your true feelings and desires, always hide what you really think, bury your passions and sacrifice for …. Well there was always a reason to sacrifice…. Essentially hide who you really are to “fit in” socially, at work etc… to fit into the “norms”

TOO MUCH

People used to tell me often that I was TOO MUCH! Too intense, too much energy, too loud, too strong, too much, too much, too much!

The ballet dancer quietly hid herself away and dived into activities more suited to her “too muchness” – horse riding, hockey…. And over eating! Because over eating became a true source of comfort. Hiding when and how I was eating, hiding behind my kilos, making people laugh through my jokes, making them think that all was ok. My loud voice, my jokes, my larger than lifeness all helped push away the opposite sex and helped me hide behind a mask – after all isn’t that what I was supposed to do.

ENOUGH!!!

Then at 16 I decided that I had to change my body. That it was time to loose some weight and take control of things. I started to loose weight with the help of my Mother and the Doctor. I thought that I would feel happier, better in myself if I lost the kilos. Diets, weight loss, regaining the weight, loosing it again… where was I in all of this? I spiraled into years of ups and downs weight wise and self estime wise and still the happiness was far from present. I was a yoyo in a diet spiral.

And boys when they started to look at me? eeekkkk help !!

Instead of finding myself in the midst of all of this, instead of finding happiness it just got worse! I had no clue who I was and how to feel “right”! I equated weight loss and the ideal body with Happiness. Happy = slim right?

How wrong can you be!

I finally did discover boys, sex, alcohol – I understood nothing except that all “that” helped obliterate further the unhappiness felt inside. I let myself be abused by situations, people, alcohol to the point of black out. I starved myself, drowned my sorrows, ate too much, ate & vomited my way through evenings, was guilt-ridden, starved myself again, practiced excessive sports activities. A cycle of destruction. I spent chunks of my life aware if the harm I was doing to myself but incapable of stopping it!

I did everything like a man – worked hard and fast, treated men pretty much the same as they often seemed to treat women. I cut myself off from my body. I was incapable of letting go, letting softness in, incapable of following my feelings, letting to soft voice of my womanhood speak to me. The natural pulsations of any woman’s body were pushed aside as being “dirty” and I should be a “good girl” – an echo from my Mother and Grandmother – and yet I would have sex with an element of alienation to both my body and being almost like it wasn’t me in the actual physical act.

“That is not how good little girls are”

Devoured by anorexia and bulimia, lost in my identity as a woman – what the hell was that? – I pushed forwards in my carrier with the gusto of a block and the ambition of Magaret Thatcher, social life of Brigitte Jones with her urban family and alcohol filled evenings and weekends. Bloated and motivated by an inner energy that not even I understood I pushed forwards…. To where I had no idea! I felt shame and guilt for nearly everything I was doing desperate to be the GOOD GIRL on the one hand HAPPY on the other (that was a long shot) and always looking elsewhere - at 1000 mph and with massive energy - or everything.

I was going head first into a wall at 1000 mph not knowing how to stop myself!

RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY

Despite my body and my “external” identity that disobeyed me at every turn I had always been attracted to religion, by churches and abbeys, by God. The notion of universal energy, this strength from somewhere else, somewhere/something bigger than us drew me in. A refuge certainly but I felt at home within those sacred walls.

At 14 years old I was visited by the spirit – or angels – During a prayer meeting. People from my church group placed their hand son me and an incredible shaft of energy and light filled by body – I was flooded with this sensation of strength, another type of “force” or light that I had never fet before. I started to speak in a different language one that doesn’t exist – speaking in tongues they call it in the bible -  everyone around me was nodding like they understood every word!

I wanted everyone to know about this but I quickly understood that this was not really the kind of information to share – not even with my own family who were quick to mock and then to say please don’t talk about this Charlotte “you will be judged or looked at like a freek” – wasn’t I already one?

Everyone did indeed treat me as a little mad when I started talking about God and the Holy Spirit … so I just stopped talking about it. I never stopped believing but it just became another thing that I kept hidden away. Everything was kept deep down inside. Buried in the same box as “no sex please we are British, my desires, my visions of being a ballet dancer, my hope that one day I would live the life I wanted to live. It stayed buried for a long time and got covered in the layers of self-abuse that ensued.

FACED WITH MYSELF

Following a break up with my long term boyfriend in my late twenties various major questions started to raise their heads. 3 weeks of total self destructions – parties, no food, lots of wine, my urban family in full swing and work to the max – I started to feel that I should take control again of my life. Ow the hell was I living, why?! Who was I in the midst of all of this?

My ex husband Christian, was not a chance meeting. He arrived in my life at the right moment to put me on the next path and place me firmly in the direction of self discovery …  I met him on the ski slopes of Val d’Isère. My ski instructor who became my husband and father to my 2 children. He helped me, supported me, encouraged me in all my courses, retreats, teacher trainings, paths to self discovery. He was at my side for many years – still is really – and despite the fact that we are now divorced I still have a lot of love for him as a person – but we grew apart as I became the person I was supposed to be he became less of the man I needed to be with. We were not making each other shine and be happy.

And my body in all of that ?????

I had become immunised to my body, detached,. Bizzarly I was also the slimmest I had been in a very very long time. And yet I wasn’t happy. Far from it! My husband no longer touched my body, I flt oddly alienated from my body, my life, my couple, my inner voice was crawling up to the surface to say that I wasn’t living the life I should be. I realized that I super sad and very lonely. On the outside everything looked amazing – I lived 6 months in the mountains, 6 months in the Ardèche, I had a ski instructor for a husband, two beautiful girls and was living as a yoga teacher – everything looked golden so why was I crying inside!

Lisa’s death – one of my closet friends in the mountains Lisa died after many years of fighting cancer. I was with her almost up to the end a sacred time. This opened up some inner doors. Deep searching and inner revelations. I was also finishing my teacher training with Shiva Rea and was on a path of Bhakti Yoga which lead to a lot of tears! 

Lisa always told me to live life fully – you only have one after all!

This time in my life was a real revelation and for some reason a real sexual revelation – I realised that for way too many years the box that had been buried deep in the inner realms of my being needed shaking up! I had to change the way I was living as a person, as a woman.

STANDING IN THE WAY OF THE LIGHT

Birdy sang this song a while ago and it expressing how I was feeling in my marriage. Every story has an ending and despite the fact that Christian had given me s o much confidence in many ways in myself and helped e along the way (and me him I hope) he was standing infront of my light!

I was ready to shine but he was standing there infront of me not deliberately but her was there.

DIVORCE, A NEW LIFE, SHINE

AND ON A MORNING NO DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER

SHE MET HERSELF IN THE MIRROR

AND SHE QUITE LIKED

WHAT SHE SAW

DO YOU THINK THAT WE ARE BORN FREE OR THAT WE BECOME FREE?

The answer is both but I had spent so many years thinking that you had to be a certain way, do a certain thing that I no longer had any idea who I was and how on earth I could find my freedom!

EMBRACING YOUR TOO MUCH!

So why am I explaining all of this to you – my body battles, my life, my marriage and divorce etc…

Because the body keeps everything stored, like a usb key. It reflects everything that you think, do, feel, bury deep within, live out loud….

I was always associating my body with my identity. My hatred for my body translated into all realms of my life I hid who I was and buried all my passions, desires and inner thoughts.

Until my body and my identity as a woman did not exist ! I became an observer of my own life!

A BATTLEGROUND OF SELF DENIAL

I tried to give a good impression to be everything everyone wanted me to be – a good girl, wife, mother, business woman…I was (am) very good at it! But the more you bury, the more you deny yourself the more you need to scream out loud!

Inside me there was a vibrant colourful unicorn desperate to get out and be free!

AND WHAT IF OUT THERE AND ODD = EXTRAORDINARY?

Our weaknesses could actually be our strengths !!!

SO ONE DAY SHE JUST DID IT!

So I took an enormous step in 2012 – the start of the Aquarian    Age according to Rebecca Campbell in her book Rise Sister Rise “- an age for and held by women!

Never do things again because “society tells us we should”, because our parents or partners tell us we should

No more pretending – you only have one life Charlotte!

Follow my : DHARMA

Moksha in yoga means = FREE

STENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES!

After a lot of self reflection I decided I should walk in my own footsteps

THAT…..

MY DIFFERENCE = unique

MY BIG VOICE = my voice can be heard when I sing, teach, talk

MY DIFFERENT NATURE OR TOO MUCH = Exceptional

MY BODY = my playground for pleasure & happiness

MY INTENSE WAY OF THINKING & LIVING = My tool for working & being creative

MY DHARMA = TO BE AUTHENTIC TO MYSELF AND SHARE THE INNER LIGHT

I encourage you to take some time and think of all those moments in your life where people have told you to do or be something you did not want to. Where you have buried your essential being.

Think about your own inner voice

Think about what your Dharma is

What is your inner voice saying where are your foot steps leading you

All those times you have been told that it is too much, not great……

Then take a deep breath, close your eyes AND LET THE IMAGE OF WHO YOU ARE FILL YOUR SOUL

Then shout it out loud !!!!!!