Category: Self Acceptance

A Martyr at Work: perfection serves no purpose 

~ womeninlivingness

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been in competition with myself: do more, be more, do better, be better.  

Be the best you can be.  

What’s wrong with that one might ask? 

While it felt good for a while and I got a lot of recognition for it – being the reliable one who could always do anything I was asked to do and to a high quality, I’ve come to realise that it’s just not it. It is like a beast that is always hungry for more, no matter how many times a day I feed it, it keeps coming to the feeding station. Continue reading “A Martyr at Work: perfection serves no purpose ” →

No periods… a message from my body

~ womeninlivingness

Six years ago the doctor asked me if I wanted anti-depressants and suggested I saw a psychotherapist for eating disorders. I’d had some big life changes and reacted with a huge amount of emotional turmoil and stress. I lost about 12kg and went down to 42kg within a few months. My periods stopped and I had no energy or enthusiasm for anything in life. 

I thought I didn’t have an eating disorder because I wasn’t obsessed with my weight or my body – I just didn’t care, about myself or anything else. I shut myself down as a woman, to myself and the world, and gave up. Continue reading “No periods… a message from my body” →

Unfolding Sacredness

~ womeninlivingness

Long before becoming a student of Universal Medicine, when I was in my early 30’s, I embarked on what I called at the time my ‘healing journey’. Abuse had featured heavily in my younger life and I longed to understand WHY (?)  

It was not that I set out with these intentions exactly, but I had a deep inner knowing that the abuse was somehow still running my life, that even though I had moved thousands of miles away and started a new life in another country, the abuse continued to be the leading character in my life and I had had enough of sharing centre stage with this life experience that I couldn’t seem to shake even when being far from the scene of the abuse.  Continue reading “Unfolding Sacredness” →

Dishonouring Choices, Self-Worth and Their Impact on Everyday Life

~ womeninlivingness

Millions of women are affected world-wide by a lack of self-worth – it is our modern-day plague. This lack of self-worth is one of the underlying reasons why many women make so many choices every day which are not only dishonouring of themselves, but can be deeply abusive; further cementing the false beliefs and negative self-talk that we are not worthy of love for ourselves or of being loved by others too. So, we could say that this is a critical topic to bring our attention and discussion to.

Continue reading “Dishonouring Choices, Self-Worth and Their Impact on Everyday Life” →

Walking with my Awesomeness: Connecting to myself and the World as a Woman

~ womeninlivingness

I was on my walk this morning, and as I walked steadily, a deep warmth circulated up my spine. I checked in with myself, feeling into it more, while continuing to walk in presence. What came was a feeling of true power in my steps, a new level of intimacy I have with my body. With walking as part of my consistent daily routine, the level of connection felt with my body has deepened. The power that I am feeling is one, which I have chosen now to live, devotedly connected to this body. The connection with my body is something I have ignored for a long time, until recently.

So this morning as I was feeling in Love and in Joy with myself and in my every step, I felt the whole world walking with me. At that moment I was aware that someone was looking at me — a man, standing at a nearby bus stop.

Continue reading “Walking with my Awesomeness: Connecting to myself and the World as a Woman” →

Being a Woman: Developing my own Self-Worth

~ womeninlivingness

I entered my adult life anticipating that I would meet the ‘one’ and have my own family. This picture was firmly set from a young age. It was what being a woman was all about, unless you were unfortunate and ended up as a spinster – on the shelf…

“In modern everyday English, spinster cannot be used to mean simply ‘unmarried woman’; it is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed.”1

The term ‘spinster’ came with such a loaded image of an unattractive, miserable and lonely woman. It was to be avoided at all costs and remaining single wasn’t an option on my checklist for life. Instead, finding ‘the one’ and having a family would mean that I’d made it … or would it? Continue reading “Being a Woman: Developing my own Self-Worth” →

Let’s Face it: Accepting and Embracing our own True Beauty

~ womeninlivingness

For many years, practising as a Professional Make-up Artist and more recently advising and offering Inner Image Consultations, I’ve noticed that as women we’re still apologising for the way we look. Why do we resist accepting and embracing our own true beauty?

The most beautiful make-up of a woman is the love that she is.

Until we truly claim the woman within, we will continue to mask and hide our Divine Beauty underneath layers of protection that no amount of make-up can penetrate.

Continue reading “Let’s Face it: Accepting and Embracing our own True Beauty” →

Jealousy: Foe or Friend?

~ womeninlivingness

Recently I realised that I was often feeling jealous and compared myself to other women, particularly my friends. If they achieved something or were doing well, got a new boyfriend, a lovely dress, anything really, I would feel small pangs of jealousy arise within my body.

In the past I have quickly pushed down these feelings of jealousy and then played the ‘nice friend’, commenting and congratulating them on whatever it is that they shared. Because the jealousy was only a small feeling, nothing too big that only lasted for a few seconds, I didn’t think I had jealousy issues.  Continue reading “Jealousy: Foe or Friend?” →

The Colour of Our Skin

~ womeninlivingness

‘ … I just have to accept how I am and how I look …‘

These are the words from Laura May McMullan after being diagnosed with malignant melanoma (skin cancer). Laura had spent many years using sunbeds only to be hit with this diagnosis some 12 years after she stopped using them.

The above words from Laura are very poignant. After spending years of trying to change herself, look different and be what she called ‘Mahogany’ in the end she’s had to accept her natural skin colour just as it is.

Continue reading “The Colour of Our Skin” →

What Defines a True Woman? – Returning to Be-You-Ty

~ womeninlivingness

For many years (actually most of my life) I was lost to myself, trying very hard to live up to a picture (actually a variety of pictures) of what defines a true woman and how it ‘should’ be, without connecting back deep inside me, and listening with care to my body, but instead from a variety of ‘external’ pictures or fixed ways to be defined as a ‘true’ woman.

There was then a time in my life that I got caught up in a way of being as woman that I thought (with the ‘help’ of my head) was ‘natural’.

As a young child I watched my mum who was always crazily busy on this committee and that charity – doing ‘noble deeds’ but running herself so ragged, utterly unable to sit still and intensely self critical in this seeking of perfection. There was a drive and a very fixed idea of what it was to be ‘good’ and ‘nice’ and ‘proper’ – and so, sadly an absence of any tenderness to self and so for others. I actively rejected (and reacted) to this way, as definitely not being ‘it’.

Continue reading “What Defines a True Woman? – Returning to Be-You-Ty” →