Category: WELLBEING | HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

A Beautiful Story

I want to share something beautiful that happened to me.

It starts with me being persistently psychologically and emotionally abused and isolated from the rest of my family, by my brother, being terrorised throughout my youth until 14 years old when I came up with the ‘brilliant’ solution – not of standing up for myself – but by numbing myself with drugs. I couldn’t work out what was ‘wrong’ with me to attract such abuse, or how to behave to stop it. As I grew up I had to invent some basis of self to fit into the world, so my entire self-esteem proceeded to be based upon a tragic array of glamorous illusions of societal constructed prerequisites for beauty and success and subsequent acceptability.

I’ve spent the better part of 51 years trying to define who I am by what I look like and what I do… the problem is, I never could. I unconsciously manipulated every choice towards seeking recognition and being acceptable. I moulded myself according to standards that I didn’t agree with or believe in, that didn’t honour my inner truth, my natural expression, me as a person, or as a woman. The truth is that the constant search of ‘what to do with my life’ always felt empty, exhausting, demoralising and impossible to resolve. The way I looked could never fulfill the world’s ‘ideal’ of beautiful; therefore, by those markers I was never going to be an acceptable human being or woman, and as a result my self-loathing blossomed into an ever-present lack of confidence and slight depression. Continue reading “A Beautiful Story” →

Universal Medicine Helped to Heal Bulimia

by Anna Karam, Goonellabah, Australia

I am a 35 year old woman. I am also a loving wife, mother of three gorgeous children, owner of a successful small business (successful by definition here being a joy to work in) and casual check out operator at my local supermarket. I’m sorry, did I forget to mention here that I am also amazing! It’s true – I love my life, I love myself, my family (in this I include many) and I love people. But life for me hasn’t always been like this. In fact, up until a few years ago I had suffered from Bulimia Nervosa, a psychological disease which began in my early teens.

For those of you who don’t know, bulimia is medically defined as an eating disorder characterised by binge eating and purging, or consuming a large amount of food in a short amount of time followed by an attempt to rid oneself of the food consumed (purging), typically by vomiting, taking a laxative or diuretic, and/or excessive exercise. But for me this definition doesn’t give a true understanding of the absolute physical and mental torture and self abuse that make up this disease. Continue reading “Universal Medicine Helped to Heal Bulimia” →

SPEAKING UP

Growing up, I was always a quiet child. In my early teens this continued; I was never loud or outspoken, and I didn’t really talk about how I felt to anyone. What I did though, was become really angry, so I started my relationship with heavy metal music… because listening to angry music seemed to have a calming effect on me when I was upset.

I was disgusted at the behaviour of a lot of my mates. They were rude, offensive and just didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone except themselves… yet I didn’t say anything to them because I didn’t want them to not like me or call me names or give me a hard time – I didn’t want to rock the boat. Continue reading “SPEAKING UP” →

A Life of Comparison

 by Suzanne Anderssen, Brisbane, Australia 

When I was a little girl, it became clear to me that the more I did and achieved, the more people noticed, rewarded, accepted and applauded me. So of course, I then set out to achieve more – to be the best at pretty much anything I set my mind to.

And this actually was pretty easy, as I got great school grades without really trying and was quite athletic, so I was pretty much better than everyone else at everything I did. Anything I didn’t perform well at, I gave up!  Continue reading “A Life of Comparison” →

The Possibility to Truly Live

by Nicole Serafin, aged 40, Australia

I thought that I had the perfect relationship: a partner who was totally trustworthy, supportive and always allowing me to do whatever I felt to – he never questioned my decisions or my choices. We had a great life; travelling overseas regularly, being able to buy whatever we wanted to, whenever we wanted to, had great friends, three dogs and an amazing property. Along with a successful business which I had built up from scratch in an area I had only just moved to.

Things were going well and I could not really ask for anything more – that was on a superficial level. We were kept busy with work and living a busy life full of many different distractions, some of which were maintaining the property we lived on, looking after our dogs, the business… and sitting back having the occasional drink and joint. The ‘occasional drink and joint’ was our way of rewarding ourselves for all the hard work we had done either earlier that day or that week; also it was a way of dealing with and trying to forget any of the stresses that the week or day had presented. Continue reading “The Possibility to Truly Live” →

And That Was My Last Drink – No Drama, No Resolve, Just Plain Common Sense

by Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah, Australia

It wasn’t that I truly ever thought drinking alcohol was okay, but everybody was doing it and I wanted to fit in.

Not drinking did make sense to me. What I noticed though, was that everybody seemed to be drinking a lot of coffee, and that some people who had stopped drinking because they were alcoholics, actually smoked a lot of cigarettes. A lesser evil so to speak, because drinking heaps of coffee and smoking did not lead to violence and family breakups: but were people just swapping one addiction for a lesser one and exchanging one prop for another? Continue reading “And That Was My Last Drink – No Drama, No Resolve, Just Plain Common Sense” →