As Denise knows only too well, spirituality is not all ‘love and light’ experiences. It’s so vital that extreme situations like the one Denise explains here are talked about so that those potentially vulnerable to them can be made aware of the risks and protected. Spirituality is far from exempt of being used as a tool of manipulation; many so called ‘Gurus’ are found to abuse their followers in one form or another. Any use of power or control is abuse, and it takes huge strength and bravery to get out and speak up. Thank you Denise for bringing your story to light in order to show both the risks and potential opportunities that can present themselves through trauma and abuse…

I was raised in what I consider to be a fundamentalist Christian sect, which I joined with my mother as a minor of ten. Key factors which can make one vulnerable are our own less than ideal childhood and subsequent poor life choices. Add to this circumstances out of our control, like the loss of key family members through death or divorce, and these were the things which hit my mother hard.  As she began to question the meaning of life, she entertained the sect who called regularly at her door. Under the circumstances she was an emotionally low-hanging fruit, ripe for the picking. These avid preachers are highly trained to spot this vulnerability and ask key questions that have sat up and begged to be answered since the beginning of time, such as ‘what is the meaning of life’ or ‘if there is a God, why does he allow suffering?’

Most cults have a knack of providing black and white answers to calm the existential angst, coupled with an intoxicating offer of family support. They achieve their aims by love-bombing their new recruits into a big happy group and reassuring them that all will be well as long as they fully adopt their belief system. In this case the carrot is the promise of a paradise on earth with no suffering, sickness or death.

What this particular sect will never tell you in advance, and is also the reason they become increasingly mentally and emotionally abusive, is that once you are sucked in it is very difficult to get out again. The thumb screws of fear and guilt are slowly turned so that initially you are not even aware that your freedom of thought and choices are being bled away. It is dictated what you can or cannot wear, listen to or watch.

If these preaching machines were to tell you upfront that you would be compelled to attend three long meetings a week, keep up with the national average of twelve hours door to door preaching a month, sacrifice a family member if they needed a banned blood transfusion, or abstain from sex until marriage, then there wouldn’t be much chance of you entering into the fold.

I became a voluntary full-time preacher at the age of eighteen, preaching for ninety hours a month, unpaid, for ten years. It was practically forbidden to study after leaving school and I had no career prospects other than my ministry and therefore no financial freedom. As a woman I was also not allowed to become an Elder or a Ministerial Servant in the congregation as these positions of authority are for males only.

I was beginning to feel ‘less than’ already and this only deepened when I married a man from my congregation at twenty-eight and he became ‘head of the house’, making all decisions.  Wives have to be obedient to their husbands in all things.

At the age of thirty-two, I found myself ripped from my family and life-long friends who were still within this sect. This was for daring to think for myself, ask awkward questions and then taking action to leave behind this patriarchal belief system.  I was branded an ‘apostate’ twenty-five years ago and if I was to meet someone from the sect on the street, they would cross the road and not speak to me.

If you found out early on how traumatic it would be to walk away and be cut off from your family and friends still within for the rest of your life, as I was, you would never sign up to this ‘paradise on earth’ deal. Shunning is one of the cruellest practices and typical of high control groups. The trauma caused by this practice alone can and did lead to depression and PTSD for me and can sometimes drive ex-followers to suicide. I had to let go of the relationship with my mother and step-father twenty-five years ago, along with all my childhood friends. I am blessed that my brother and sister also left and that we are allies – not everyone is that lucky.

The point in my life where I started to thrive, rather than just survive the strict and puritanical routines, was when I catapulted myself and my four-year-old daughter into the unknown, away from this religion, a five-year marriage and the country I had settled in, Switzerland. It had taken two years of skilled psychotherapy to rebuild my core sense of self enough to leave the sect and six months later, my husband. At the age of thirty-two, I was on a journey to begin a new life, returning to my native country, England, where I rebelled against every belief and lie I had been taught since childhood. It was a time of fun, laughter and adventure into the great unknown world.

It’s so important to reach out for support to any family or friends you may initially have outside of the Organisation when you are severing yourself from the clutches of undue influence. It’s a very delicate and vulnerable stage of re-building your life from ground zero. I got in touch with my birth father and several friends who had left the sect some years earlier and it was joyous to meet, eat together and talk about the good old days we’d had as well as the bad.  The camaraderie of shared experience can make the transition to a new life so much less painful.

As I was in a new county and a town where I knew nobody, I decided to join the local gym and made a good companion there. When I started working, I made core friends that have supported me unconditionally through thick and thin, a far cry from my self-righteous religious family.

During the next twenty years, I worked my way up the career ladder as a personal assistant, eventually holding a good position at Universal Pictures in London. There I was given an opportunity to grow a large corporate social responsibility programme over and above my job role, which I loved. We would volunteer at local homeless centres, give reading practice to under-privileged inner-city children, re-paint their school or weed and paint at the Wetlands Wildfowl trust.

How do you learn to thrive when you feel broken inside and your self-esteem is at rock bottom? Creativity has been a life-saver for me. I was drawn to silk painting a couple of years before I left my husband and the relationship that I built to colour aided in expressing my emotions and became a healing experience.

I felt a sense of self-assurance beginning to bud when I had singing lessons and learnt to play keyboard and guitar. After many years of relating my cult escape story to anyone who would listen, and with their encouragement, I felt the calling to begin writing my story. It took me thirteen years of struggling with deeply suppressed emotions, writers’ block and depression before I ’emerged proud’ to become an author.  My book has just been published and has finally been birthed into the world after a long drawn out labour of love. It can be purchased here:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Freespirit369

And you can find out more about my journey on my website:

Our 2nd KindaProud Pocket Book of Hope and Transformation is not to be missed!

Grab yourself a collection of inspirational personal transformation stories in a little pocketbook, complete with self-help tips and a crisis guide… ALL of the proceeds go to buying FREE books for sending messages to those in need – what’s not to love? ❤

Out on 12th July – GET YOUR COPY HERE from that date on… 

Would you like to share your personal story for our next 2 books in the series to give hope to others? 

We are still collecting submissions for; 

#EmergingProud through Suicide and #EmergingProud through Trauma and Abuse

CONTACT US HERE to find out how to get involved… Please remember that your journey can help others to know that they can get through whatever they may be facing too ❤

 Don’t forget – only 2 weeks to go!

The wound is where the light enters – Rumi

Sometimes it’s the wisdom of our body that speaks to us the loudest.  Like Stella , sometimes we are made to stop physically so we can learn the lessons we need to hear – Stella found happiness in the very thing she had been running from for so many years; now viewing  her body as her temple in which she finds sanctuary and joy, she has the courage not only to heal herself, but to also inspire others…

As far back as I can recall I felt out of place, different and uncomfortable in my skin. I had always had an unhealthy relationship with food and my body as a child. I would often over-eat, and I remember skiving off school because I was horrified that the only trousers I had to wear made me look fat. I was seven at the time. I hid those trousers like my feelings and no one found them. When I was eleven an older girl showed me how to make myself sick. I can only imagine that it was a kind of bonding exercise but what she was actually sharing was a weapon. Bulimia was a young girl’s weapon against the uncontrollable and confusing chaos of an adult world. By the time I was fifteen I was making myself sick regularly. Through binging I was letting myself lose control, it was always from a place of deep anxiety. Following this would come the purge, motivated by the shame of losing control and the need to regain it urgently. Not only for controls sake but also to adhere to an acceptable shape by society’s standards. As a young woman so much of my worth was placed on my body and that body was dictated to me by males and beauty images. The compulsion to eat I am sure was, and still is, about love, acceptance and comfort. It was born from confusion about what and who I was meant to be.

Over time my mental health improved and I would slip into bulimia less and less. In my early twenties I was well enough to have left it behind, and although I would still feel the compulsion, I would refuse to hurt my body. For me this was a radical concept, since I had never loved myself enough to lay that boundary of self-care. It was a start but there was a long way to go. At this stage I was still in denial that I had a problem. It was as if it was happening to someone else, I was detached from it. In not dealing with the issue of bulimia, let alone all the underlying causes, this familiar beast would soon grow a new head.

At twenty-five, during a time of upheaval and grief, I began dramatically changing my eating habits and focusing on vegetables, juicing and being healthy. I lost a lot of weight around this time and people commented on how thin I was with either concern or envy and it felt good.  Over time this would develop into an unhealthy obsession with clean eating to the point where I would create strict rules on what I allowed myself to consume. I was skipping meals, restricting food groups and developing extreme beliefs around food. On a good day I was a healthy eater. On a bad day I was fixated by the idea that tumorous cells were multiplying inside me and the only way to prevent this was through cleansing my body with clean eating. Healthy eating is wonderfully healing but the extent to which I was obsessing was clearly not healthy. I would come to understand this obsession as orthorexia, a form of disordered eating that is becoming more recognised. I believe that the range of confusing and contradictory messages on health out there today is contributing to this growing condition.

Just over a year ago, after months of chronic fatigue, I was diagnosed with M.E and everything began to change. I had the opportunity to reassess my life, my priorities, and to make space for self-care. This health crisis cracked me open and sparked the realisation that I was and had been for some time in spiritual crisis. I started to explore mind-body connections and tried every holistic therapy I could find. I am delighted to say I am doing well and although I will always have to manage my M.E symptoms, I am happier than I have ever been. I know this to be down to re-learning how to connect with myself, my mind-body, my soul. Through these therapies and developing my own daily spiritual self-care practice I have begun to heal old wounds that previously consumed me and change my un-checked negative thought patterns. A turning point was the realisation that if I kept telling my body it was ugly I would make it true. If I told my body that it was beautiful it would be beautiful, the power of thought really is transformative. I found my voice and unlearnt all that poor self-care that was really centred on fear and a lack of inner knowing. Only once I had rebuilt my foundation and learnt to really love myself, was I able to confront my relationship with food out in the open.  It will always be complicated and it will never go away. Some days are harder than others, but most days are pretty good. How I feel about myself today has little to do with the way I look and everything to do with self-love, acceptance and authenticity. In the past I was unkind to myself and taught others to follow my lead. Today I respect myself deeply and show others how I deserve to be treated with the hope that I can inspire self-care in those who need it most.

My body is my soul’s companion, it walks with me in this life and takes burdens and knocks along the way. It is not my prison, it is like a school in which I learn. It helps me reach new places. It is my temple in which I have sanctuary, comfort and joy. Give me courage to listen to my own story, to begin to know myself so that I can listen and be useful to others.

Thank you Stella, for baring your embodied wisdom in order to inspire hope to others – we are KindaProud of you! ❤

We are no longer taking submissions for Amy’s pocket book, but stories for our next 2 titles are welcome; do they resonate with your journey?

#EmergingProud through Suicide

#EmergingProud through Trauma and Abuse

If you’d like to take part in our KindaProud pocket books of Hope and Transformation series, CONTACT US! 

As Sylvia says; You can’t change what happens to you in life, but you can change the way you walk forwards on your path. After years of depression and not feeling good enough due to an horrendous accident when she was a child, one day Sylvia decided to ‘#EmergeProud’ from behind her cloak of protection, and shine like the star that she was meant to be!

At the age of 3, I was hospitalized from an accident at home falling into boiling water.

After surviving life support, I went on to have numerous surgical procedures and operations. Every aspect of growing up in a society with a so called ‘perfect body image’ left me screaming inside.  No matter how much support I received from family members, I could never love or appreciate my body and all the pain it was going through.  When I hit my teens, one thing that stood out to me was body image and looking beautiful. My schoolfriends spent most of their time grooming themselves in front of the mirror and then there was the glossy magazines with flawless images.  I recall hearing my mother’s friends say ‘thank God its not on her face’, but I converted those words to ‘the scars on her body are ugly and she is too’.

The hospital consultants continually told my mother that I should stay covered up from the sun and as most burn victim or survivors know that this is all year round.  Those words certainly had an effect on the rest of my life.  Then there were all the hospital visits where my scarring was examined by student doctors.  The only problem for me was that uncovering in front of a bunch of strangers really took its toll on my mental health.

As I went into adulthood, I found myself feeling more and more anxious, often suffering panic attacks believing that everyone knew I was burned.  As a burn victim I found myself attracting undesirables who would take my insecurities for granted so I allowed myself to be abused both physically, sexually and mentally.  I finally hit rock bottom, drinking copious amounts of alcohol daily and then I met someone who fell in love with me and didn’t worry about my scars.  We went on to have children together but no amount of love was going to undo years of self-hate.  I began drinking heavily and often turning up at my children’s school intoxicated.  Each day was different for me where I would either be happy and attacking everyone, then the next day thinking of how I could end it all.

I found myself trapped in a bubble of self-conscious thoughts and low self-esteem, lacking confidence in everything from school, work, relationships and society.  In 2016 my grandson was born, but I was still locking myself in my bedroom and crying every day. My GP asked that I try counselling but unfortunately it didn’t work for me.  I began to research severe disfigurement on the body but each time I was presented with ‘facial disfigurement.’  I couldn’t understand why, when I almost lost my life twice and suffered 3^rd/4^th degree burns to my body, it wasn’t being acknowledged.  I understood how difficult it was for a person with facial difference to deal with this every day, but I also knew that I was suffering too. My mental health was severely affected as well as dealing with lifelong physical pain.

In summer 2016, I was on holiday with my mother and noticed someone filming me.  I dropped my sarong off my shoulders and my scarring was on display.  We left the pool for the beach where my mother asked questions about my scars and I realised that she could have suffered PTSD, Guilt and so much more.  I took this moment to help change her life by strutting to the waters edge and uncovering my scars.

This was the beginning of my Love Disfigure journey to body acceptance and helping support others online come to terms with their visible or hidden differences.  I shared an online video reveal and spoke about what I endured throughout my life.  I set up a Facebook group to encourage people who look different both facially and/or BODILY to embrace the way they look.  I didn’t want anyone to go through years of depression and suicidal thoughts as I did.

It wasn’t long until I received worldwide messages, and I was quickly changing other people’s lives through my campaigning.  I was even more surprised to hear from people who had all types of struggles including bipolar, depression and even stretchmarks who wanted to become involved.

Now is the time for us all to become more diverse and inclusive in this body obsessed society that we live in through educating and campaigning.   It might have taken a lifetime to get here but its all been worth it helping others to accept the way they look.  I now campaign for more diversity within the fashion industry, tv & film industry and above all society.  We are all survivors and should be proud of our bodies and how amazing they are regardless of how they look. The more we talk about how we feel through our own real life stories, the more awareness is raised so that our children can grow up in a world of body acceptance and true diversity.

Always accept a compliment 

You won’t be able to change your path in life but you can change the way you walk it 

Sylvia 🙂

https://www.lovedisfigure.com/

Follow Sylvia’s inspiring work on these social media platforms:

Instagram – love_disfigure

Twitter – LoveDisfigure

FB Group – LOVE DISFIGURE

Mel discovered that the answer to her healing took a brave leap of faith to do something outside of her comfort zone, only then did she discover that she was capable of everything she’d previously told herself she couldn’t do. We think she’s a ‘f**king soldier‘ for overcoming her limiting beliefs too!

When I was a kid I loved Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Neighbours was one of my favourite TV shows and I really, really wanted to go to Australia. I thought it sounded like the coolest place in the world, but my family told me it was very far away and very expensive to get to. We mostly went on holiday to Butlins which, if you’ve never had the pleasure of going to, involves hyperactive kids and incredibly drunk parents. I knew there wasn’t much hope of ever getting to Australia.

Nobody I knew in my hometown in the Midlands ever went travelling. Gap years were for rich kids. Backpacking was for sporty types who wanted to go trekking and kayaking. I hated sport. I got laughed at for coming last in cross-country at school. I hated PE lessons because we had to wear gym shorts and I hated my thighs. On holiday, I was even embarrassed to wear a swimming costume in front of my family – I wore a big baggy t-shirt over it whenever possible.

When I was in my early twenties, a friend from my home town announced, quite suddenly, that he was going to travel around the world. This friend was like me, working in a minimum wage job in hospitality, and he referred to our town as the “black hole of dreams.” I’d already tried to go to university and dropped out. My confidence was low and my anxiety was at an all-time high.

My friend travelled around the world for about ten months. He sent me emails telling me about all the people he’d met and all the awesome stuff he was doing. His family weren’t rich – he’d saved up all that money himself. I’d told myself for so long that I was too poor, too fat and not sporty enough to do anything like that, but my excuses were proving weak. But, there was the whole swimsuit problem…

My first swimming lesson at primary school did not go well. We each had to get in the pool so the teacher could see our swimming ability. I was so scared that I couldn’t get my arms and legs to work. I felt myself sinking, literally and metaphorically, as the entire class laughed. I was bullied a lot at primary school for being the weird, fat, poor kid with divorced parents, but I was also teased by adults outside of school too. It’s taken a lot of therapy to work through the pain of constantly feeling ashamed of myself.

My friend came back from his travels. He kept telling me “if I can do it, you can.” A female friend at work was planning to go to Australia. Seeing another woman plan a trip alone was the final push I needed. It took years of saving up money, but eventually I bought a working holiday visa for Australia. I lost myself in the logistics, until the day I booked flights. That’s when sh*t got real.

How was I going to survive so far away from my family? What the hell was I going to wear on the beach? I looked at those frilly dress-style swimming costumes that bigger women are expected to wear. Why should we have to wear horrible frumpy things, or be expected to cover up, just to make other people feel more comfortable? So I bought a tankini – a halter top and bottoms. It felt nicer than a swimming costume, but it wasn’t as scary as a bikini. I still wasn’t sure I’d be able to wear it in public. In the few weeks before my flight, with help from friends and my parents, I continually countered my inner critical voice. I didn’t refer to it as that back then – I thought it was normal to have those kind of negative thoughts. My inner critic told me I was going to fail. That I’d run home to my parents again and get laughed at.

Just before I left, my friend gave me a pep talk. He said if I ever doubted myself I should look in the mirror and say “I’m a f**king soldier.” I told him that was f**king stupid. He kept saying, “mate, you’ve just gotta do it – tell yourself, I’m a f**king soldier.”

So I was in the toilets at Heathrow airport, my stomach in knots, sitting on the loo, saying over and over in my head, I’m a f**king soldier. I didn’t care if it was stupid at that point, I had to try it.

I thought I’d probably just spend a few months in Australia and then miss home and come back. I ended up travelling for over five years.

Going travelling is often seen as a form of escapism, and that’s okay. Sometimes you need to get out of the town you grew up in so you can start to heal. I met people from all over the world and my confidence grew. I continually proved myself wrong and did things that I never thought short fat girls from the Midlands were allowed to do. I wore my tankini on the beach every bloody day, because getting on that plane was the scariest thing I ever did and I was damned if I was going to let swimwear defeat me.

On reflection, maybe it wasn’t about swimwear after all. I channelled all my anxieties into my body in the hope that I could change it. If I just lost weight it would solve everything. When really, it was a childhood of being told I was never good enough and constantly being asked to change myself. Through all my different travels, living a life of swimming in the sea every day and eating all different kind of foods, I never lost weight. I spent four months in India and got very sick. I barely ate for weeks, and I still wasn’t thin. It was at that point I made the promise to myself that I would never try to force my body into a different size or shape. All that matters is my health and that I have a healthy relationship with food with no rules, no dieting, no restrictions. It doesn’t matter what size I am – it’s my mental and physical health that matters. I will never be thin, and that’s fine. I am no longer afraid of being fat. There are so many worse things to be than fat.

Learning to be more comfortable in swimwear was just the side effect. What I learnt was a wider perspective, whilst un-learning all the rules I grew up with. It’s a long journey of self-love, but I’m pleased to be learning about the world and myself, and I hope to now be able to help others who’ve been through similar things. I work for an eating disorder charity and I’m training to be a counsellor. Everyone deserves to feel good about themselves irrelevant of where they come from or what they look like. But it starts with doing something scary – pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s worth the leap of faith, I promise.

Mel Ciavucco

Keep up with Mel’s inspiring blogs via these social media platforms:

Twitter: @MCiavucco

IG: @MelCiavucco

FB page: The Compassionate Feminist

www.melciavucco.weebly.com

We are no longer taking submissions for Amy’s book; #EmergingProud through Disordered Eating, Body Image and Low Self-Esteem, however, if you have a story of overcoming personal adversity you’d like to share, please CONTACT US HERE to find out how to get involved – together we could help to save lives ❤