Who knew it’d be ok to have a voice?

My first blog about my personal pain.  Speaking out has given personal opportunities as well as given my business a new injection of life & energy. Who knew it’d be ok to have a voice?

You will have no idea (unless you have been through similar circumstances) how much it has taken for me to write this article. To take another little step forward in sharing my story.

I do have a voice, a little apprehensively still, but nonetheless I have a voice and always have, I have just taken a long time (over 35 years) to discover it and know how to use it.

I am proud of where I am today in business and personally. Ideally I would like to not have had a past so confusing and degrading, but I have and ironically it has given me the strength I now have together with a fight to achieve the best life I can for myself, my daughter and others in similar situations.

I have found my worth. I no longer feel a fraud. My personal and business life has changed and I am relieved. My chains are getting lighter.

My voice is honest, powerful and sprinkled with hope, love and peace. It is the same voice you all have should you find the confidence to let go. Everything we have to say has a powerful meaning to someone, we just have to find the “right someone” to listen.

Speaking out about being sexually abused and abandoned as a child has actually started to become quite liberating and hugely empowering. I don’t want sympathy. I never have. I just want to give back to society, a society that has always been there. I just haven’t always understood in what capacity. The dark place I used to view the world, as a child, is now far more colourful, pretty and kind. I am a survivor and so are you.

Starting my recovery (therapy) and in business over 20+ years ago and finding new ways to explore who I am and what it is I want to achieve has taken many twists and turns over the years. Never in a MILLION YEARS did I think I would be here writing a book or blogging about my life, sharing so publicly about how my life has shaped me. I had always thought I would take to the grave what happened to me as a child and never speak up. Not sure why, maybe I was protecting people. I just never thought after all these years I could share so publicly a horrific time of my life. But I have and I am. The perpetrators aren’t my responsibility and never have been, something that has taken me many years to realise. I always felt protective towards them or was it because I was to scared? I believe it was fear. I couldn’t dream of getting them in trouble. They’d made me feel like I couldn’t, they gave me guilt. But now I really couldn’t care for them at all. I have forgiven them for what they have done to me. Not for their sake but for mine. I have let them go to allow me my freedom (you have no idea how that makes me feel writing this, almost a bit breathless to say it, good energy!)

If you are in doubt, need some confidence, then here it is. You have a voice and you don’t need to hide behind it. Let it go. Life is to short and you have no idea how your words can help others and shape who you are. Forgive and let go….holding tightly onto pain isn’t productive. You CANNOT fight pain with pain, I tried for many years and was broken from doing so.

Become a warrior, keep fighting and enjoy what unravels around you. Life becomes a better place to live if you can just trust yourself to live it. There are happier days ahead for us all, have faith and trust yourself before life becomes a distant memory.