The beginning of last year it came to me, quite loudly a pattern in my life. 
A pattern so hidden from me that often only my throat would feel it, when my body began to re-live a fear of being “too seen, too heard and too much.”
Too much was clearly not allowed. Too much meant I had stepped out beyond … become seen and heard.
I realised it was not just experiences with men that put me back in my place but women too and like a good girl I would meekly crawl back to where I came from, a box called “not enough” and stamped with a large sticky label marked “of little, if any value.”
I pulled away at the corner of the sticky label and there underneath I not only saw but felt something old and yet shiny. It was called “courage” and “fuck you.”
I was not sure which one I needed.
I tried on “fuck you” and although she got me to places I had not been before, it felt too care less as in “I could not care less …”
“Fuck you” Seemed to get me in predicaments that actually created large consequences.
She was the adamant, provoking, destructive teenager.
I thanked her for stepping back into my life … slamming and locking a few doors that had been left open with no boundaries of self protection and outdated rules for far too long.
And through her I embraced the archetype of father who instinctively knew how to say no and protect on his daughters behalf.
I then tried on “Courage.”
Now courage and I have lived pretty much in each other’s pockets since life as Michelle began.
I mean we had to.
Where ever I was, courage had to be, for I can tell you now I would not have survived those childhood years.
But this time courage was not walking beside me to get me through.
Instead courage simply opened a window of a different shade of light and said I needed to step out this time on my own.
For all these years, I had unconsciously been expecting “enough ness” and value to be given back to me. To give me permission to not only show up in the world but be part of it.
My mother and father had gobbled up, desecrated and spat out with little regard my enough~ness and value in an abusive idea of parenting and so somewhere in my consciousness I believed that if a man and a woman had taken it away, then it was from a man and a woman I needed it back from.
Something in my wiring was programmed to think that if it was something that was taken, it was therefore something that could only be given back.
This logic comes from the innocent and yet dependable mind of any child that is not nourished and nurtured in a loving environment. Encouraged and empowered with love to be all that he or she is and share that with the world around them.
It is from the adults around us, especially our parents that we are totally dependent upon to show us love, value, worthiness and build us up from a tiny seed of life, nurturing our roots so that we may grow and flourish.
But if the adults, those that we unconditionally love and without question trust and depend upon, abuse their role in the Child’s life then that programming may last for many years and develop and instil itself as confusion as to what love is, repeating itself into adults relationships and life.
Of course with my academic knowledge and adult logic I knew this was not so but those crucial childhood years had ingrained a body memory that held the core believe it was and until I stepped out alone and found my value and enough~ness within myself, the patterns in my life and relationships would be for ever creating a circle back to this one point.
And so with “fuck you” and “courage” now on speaking terms I stepped out into the world, with the intuitive wisdom that what I needed to do was give to myself the dreams and experiences I had not ever felt worthy of and was waiting for permission to have.
And to attend to the Ways I feared showing up in the world.
I travelled to India alone. A teenage dream that I told myself I was worthy enough for it to be now my reality.
I pulled myself out of bed at silly o’clock every morning to attend Boot Camp and built a strong, empowering and powerful relationship with women of a new kind. One that made us all face our challenges as a team.
And with them I waded into the sea and conquered another fear of mine.
I stood up on stage with microphone and spoke to a crowd. The talk I gave was completely shit but that did not matter, I had showed up and stayed up and spoken!
I began to create videos and share my voice with truth and passion to meet others in their sexual trauma and desire for intimacy and body love.
I learnt burlesque and danced within a burlesque show.
Allowing myself to move in my body with erotic freedom without the pain of “wrong attention” or consequences …
Revealing my new boobies with pride, releasing the fear that they were something that would repulse or be unaccepted.
I said to the world, here I am, showing up … to share myself , in body, voice and heart.
Inside me from an empty pool that had looked for so long on the outside for its missing source … I began to feel value and enough unfolding, firstly as a whisper that soothed and softened …
“Trusting myself with myself”
And then as I moved deeper into self trust … a majestic strength and truth flowered within my bones, in my voice.
The way I moved no longer feared being seen … I found it in the way I held myself and presented myself from a place of body to the world.
Not an external quest from “another” anymore.
Not waiting for one man or one woman to return it to me if I was a good girl.
No.
A balance enabling a space to parent and hold one self through an internal Mother/Father archetype. Claimed and trusted to nuture and maintain my very own unconditional source of self value and enough.
