Its been a little quiet on the Woman X Collective front since our last piece on my beautiful friend was posted but as always a break is sometimes needed.

Especially when your energy requires to make certain shifts.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had to deal with some psychological and energetic changes in regards to how I feel about myself and how I choose to hold myself as a person.

In short I was reviewing my worthiness.

I do this a lot anyway but I feel it was much more of a push this time round because the wound comes from childhood.

Of course, it was something I thought I didn’t need, but who am I kidding? The universe is always constantly asking us to re evaluate every tiny detail of ourselves.

We have had some major planetary shifts in the cosmos that have forced our energies to shed what we no longer need and to release what is no longer serving our greater good.

For me, I’ve finally got my ahh-ha moment today.

I could feel the work happening in the background as I celebrated a milestone birthday and was fortunate enough to have time away in a beautiful part of the world to contemplate some of these feelings while the shifts were taking place, it felt like it was complete divine timing.

But since coming back, I’ve had to brunt the feelings in everyday life like everybody else instead of sipping mocktails, wearing less clothing and staring at magical sunsets.

Let’s get down to it shall we, the feelings I’ve described regarding my worthiness is how I accept to be treated by others.

I’m sure others will be able to resonate here and possibly do a little self reflection wherever the wound may be sitting for them.

Now, when it comes to some relationships I’ve always been the one who forgives, forgets and moves forward in hopes that the other person will see what they do and have optimism that they will rectify their actions in future.

Depending on the person, I sometimes don’t say how I truly feel because I’m fearful I will loose the person completely and I’m fearful of the unnecessary drama that can be associated with the persons response.

Some people who know me, will say “thats a bit of bullshit Felicia you always say how you feel.”

But in some relationships I actually don’t and I try not to let it effect me, but it always cuts deep when I don’t speak up.

I’m very lucky that I have a husband that knows me well and knows my worthiness and will pull at these feelings and ask me to sit with them and sort them out by actually speaking my truth.

BUT I always say “No, don’t worry I’ll deal with it in my own way and I’ll manage.”

When I do this though, I place my feelings in a box and store it under my mental bed and I never actually deal with it.

So, going back to my ahh-ha moment I’ve come up with the below:

I do believe that no matter what your circumstance in life are, we as human beings have choices. Good ones and bad ones.

We have choices in the way we think, speak and behave.

I’ve learnt that this is how we grow and become aware of our surroundings.

Even if some people repeat this step time and time again.

What I’m trying to get at is that we try to make choices that are best for us.

It feels rewarding if the choices we make are with intentions that are for the goodness of the soul and help you strive forward to become a better person on the inside because it will reflect on the outside and people will feel that positive choice and reciprocate.

But sometimes the choices some of us make are self righteous, destructive and hurt those around us. Even though we may think it isn’t effecting those around us it, it always does.

I’ve learnt that good choices are more then words, it’s genuine sincere actions.

We as human beings choose to be kind people, we choose how we treat people, we choose to be good to ourselves and we certainly choose how we see our futures.

I wouldn’t be human if I said it wasn’t hard, because it is.

People betray us, people hurt us and people can simply be selfish and that’s what can make choices towards how we treat people so hard.

But we need to know our worth and start serving the purpose.

I want a peaceful, loving, healthy and fulfilling life and so I will make choices that will give me those outcomes.

I will do this by making the choice to not take on what a person may be projecting out that is negative, by walking away from someone when necessary, by taking a break from the person when I need to reflect on what’s going on and ultimately my intent will be to end up speaking my truth.

Just know that speaking your truth to the person may give them the nudge they may need to help you both move forward in a good way, but also accept the fact that it may also mean that they walk away and learn that choice is ok too.

Own your worth and don’t ever give up on yourself!

Whatever will be, will be 💓

With love,

Fe

As we all know, grief takes us on all sorts of different paths. It never truly goes away and the journey after time changes its course.

A week before Chantel’s mum Grace took her last breath in her home, Chantel was in a state of trance.

With her spiritual gifts she would receive messages from the spirit worlds and was surrounded by the archangels and her ancestral lines.

She knew the outcome for her Mother and needed to make Grace as comfortable as she could.

Chantel watched her mother take her last breath surrounded by family and seen her mother’s soul exit her body.

For the next few months, Chantel felt her mother by her side until the physicality of Graces presence not being around began to take a toll.

Chantel’s son Rafael was 3 months at the time when her grief started to settle itself inside of her heart.

Life for Chantel started to shrivel up and the anxiety, loneliness and depression started to set in. She was completely heart broken.

Her mother and best friend in this life time was gone and she wasn’t around to see her newborn flourish and physically help her out.

Chantel often would hide in places around her house trying to cover the tears from her family, she found it difficult to socialise and started noticing her mind and soul shutting down from the world.

During this time, Chantel was stubborn in her ways and didn’t seek help as she felt that with her gifts and mindfulness she would eventually heal her self.

This was not the case, she shut her self down completely, which in turn stunted her own healing and deflected anyone trying to assist with her healing.

A year or so after Graces passing, Chantel was given the opportunity for her and her family to move into the family home where her mother had passed.

This was a big relief for Chantel, because it was somewhere she knew and felt comfortable and had memorable times with her family.

Everything from then seemed to be ok but the grief came in waves, the anxiety and depression always lingered, even to the point that Chantel wanted to take her own life.

She started to disconnect and turn herself off from different parts of herself and ignored her own self care.

This can be very heavy to read but that’s how far the mind can take you.

I too had felt that kind of despair after my mother passed.

But this is where Chantel’s physical health started to make a decline.

It started with her sacral. Her womb.

She was experiencing terrible pains that were indescribable and needed to be taken into hospital on occasion.

The doctors couldn’t figure out entirely what it was until they decided to operate.

On the 29th of November 2017, Chantel had her first surgery and the doctors ended up removing a benign tumour on her right ovary and also the removal of stage 4 endometriosis.

Her body somewhat recovered over a 3 month period but then her body started to play up again.

She was experiencing body aches all over, brain fog, difficulties staying awake and lack of focus and couldn’t concentration.

This is where her stomach issues started to arise.

As a person on the outside, I was confused to why all these health issues were arising. If it wasn’t one thing it was another, it was difficult to get answers out of her and her doctors, because no one could diagnose her with anything, she was just constantly in pain.

For me, it really broke my heart. I wanted to help her so much but there was physically nothing I could do but just be there when she needed me and help out whenever I could.

Everyday her stomach was bloated and in pain with anything she ate.

I witnessed her stomach looking like she was 7 months pregnant and she became fatigued and would be completely out of it.

Her endometriosis returned & she started experiencing paralysis on the right side of her pelvis that would run down her leg and she found it difficult to walk.

In all honesty, it was like she was falling apart from the inside out and becoming a frail old woman.

Finally in October of 2018 the doctors decided they would remove her gallbladder and with that do a biopsy.

Chantel was put on a wait list for her surgery, the hospital called her shortly after she received her letter about the wait list and requested that they operate the next morning.

Chantel knew then and there it was her mum working her magic.

She felt her so closely, whispering soothing sounds, the surgery was scheduled on the 3rd date, she was 3rd on the list to be operated on and her hospital room number was number 3.

This was Chantel and Graces special number.

The results of the biopsy were extreme, her body was starting to develop cancerous cells around the gallbladder.

If she had waited a few more months for the surgery she would have needed to start chemo tablets or some form of treatment.

After this surgery nothing really eased for Chantel. The pains only increased with all over body pains and stomach issues.

Chantel started losing weight, depleted of energy most days and became bed ridden and unable to drive her kids to school.

Her children would constantly see her laying on the couch in pain.

Rafael her youngest became so worried of Chantel dying, that they had to get him a therapist through his primary school to help him understand what was happening and give him ways he could cope.

Luca, Chantel’s eldest son suffered also but always tried his best to hide it and always wanted to help out.

He would hold her while she walked and hobbled around the house.

The doctors kept doing their tests, she was in and out of emergency with hospital stays, But all they seemed to do was drug Chantel up and try different medications and her body would always have a negative reaction to them.

One doctor provided an answer and diagnosed Chantel with fibromyalgia, because the pains couldn’t be identified to any symptoms to anything.

During this time Chantel started to look within and started to use a more holistic approach, taking it back to her spiritual roots, she took up specified yoga for Endometriosis and fibromyalgia.

Chantel had her 3rd and last operation in May 2019 where they found pre cancer in her colon.

When she received her results, she asked her doctor what was next and he blankly could not give her an answer.

At this point, Chantel fed up with all western doctors, she started to take things into her hands and started researching.

She found an amazing Gastroenterologist Dr Alan Desmond overseas who advised her to try a completely plant based diet.

This was a challenge and transition for Chantel, being forced into cutting out all types of meats and animal products but it was a must for her health.

She found a holistic doctor in America through social media and started following Anthony William’s Celery Juice and other plant based protocols.

A combination of ancient kundalini practices, deep rooted meditations, breath work and Bowen therapy and doing these practices EVERY DAMN DAY, Chantel started to change her life!

Within a few weeks her energy was back, her children got their mother back and her husband Ruben got his wife back.

Her endometriosis pains were gone.

Chantel realised that plants were her medicine and attuning herself with her body was her medicine.

She rooted herself back into Mother Earth and knew that she was her true healer.

Chantel is completely grateful for all those who stuck by her and helped her through this journey of self discovery.

She is thankful to the universe everyday and knows now that you have to truly experience the depths of your own terrible in order to learn lessons about your own journey.

Chantel with her health in check, her spiritual self has finally aligned with her purpose and her aspirations have floated back to help others out of these depths through plant based medicines and holistic healings.

Her space is definitely one to watch and 100% supported and received with love.

As Chantel would say – Ahó 🕉

Chantel, it took time.

But I knew you could do it.

I love you.

💓

Well, let me tell you how excited I am to be introducing one of my all time favourite people in this universe!

My best friend Chantel a.k.a my earth goddess, mother of nature, lover of all things light, the most loving person I have met in my entire human existence.

I first met this beautiful woman at a local shopping centre nestled in the Western suburbs about 11years ago.

It was after I had lost my mum, I was searching for guidance and literally looking for anything that would give me any feeling of my mum being around, the shop Angels Realm is where our paths connected.

I walked into the shop and there she was in her own little world fluttering around the shop like a fairy tending to its garden. Except that, she looked more goddess like, this slender, olive skin, green eyed woman with crazy long curls with a bounce that sprayed out sunshine.

I automatically felt loved without even speaking to her, and that’s all I wanted to do. Speak to her. I introduced myself, told her what I had been through and where I was at and she shed light on things that I could do with compassion that I had never felt before.

Before I know it, I was doing meditation circles & meeting everyone that was in her circle. Including her beautiful mother Grace.

Chantel and Grace, gave me a sense of home and I began to open up spiritually with each encounter. We had some precious moments in those days and times I will never forget.

As time went on, I was focusing on changing my world for the better and I didn’t spend much time at the shop, but Chantel and I kept in contact from time to time.

But as I was focusing on my life and trying to discover my path, Chantel was thrown a curve ball.

This is where I believe Chantel and my journey started to form solid.

Though a little background will shed some light.

Chantel was married and had a beautiful baby boy, she had a relationship with her mother like no other. To the tune of basically doing life together.

Grace was always by Chantels side through absolutely everything and vice-versa.

Chantel has told me stories about her and her mum and how Grace had spiritual gifts that were passed on to Chantel.

Grace was a spiritual Shaman and taught Chantel not to be afraid of spirit but instead embrace them. She taught her the art of compassion and how to dance spiritually and physically.

They had been through so much together emotionally due to family dynamics, they travelled parts of the world, uprooting there lives and moving to Spain for Chantels Dad’s work for a year and half.

They experienced countless paranormal experiences together & Grace taught Chantel how to protect and honour her own spirit through these times.

But that’s not all they experienced together, they also experienced illness together.

You see, Grace was diagnosed when she was 35 years of age with breast cancer, she fought the beast off twice and was in remission. But, after many years, the beast returned this time in her pancrease. That was mid year of 2011.

Upon finding out that her mothers illness had return, in these months Chantel discovered she was pregnant with Twins.

On the 25th January 2012, Grace gave her last breath and with saying good bye to her best friend and mother, Chantel also had lost one of her twins shortly before. Ava Grace.

As you could imagine, Chantel had her soul completely ripped out and stripped. Everything she knew and felt disappeared. She spiraled down the grief path and she shut down her soul for a very, very long time.

The only strength she could provide was to try her best to look after her family and her new son to the best of her ability but this was a journey that challenged her mental well being and physical health.

From seeing this goddess like woman go down the only road I knew at the time and in which her and mother helped me steer a new direction, was soul shattering.

I decided that it was my mission to get her through these times of despair & to eventually get her back where she needed to be. But as we all know everything takes time and we all handle things differently.

Her journey will be continued in her next piece.

💓

Well this is something I thought wouldn’t cross my mind but throughout this whole pregnancy, I have on occasion had to remind myself I am pregnant.

It’s getting hard not to notice how pregnant I actually am. My tummy feels huge this time round and the baby is 500grams bigger then what Maksim was at this time.

Day by day, it’s getting a little more difficult to get things done. The grocery shopping, chasing around Maksi boom boom, hanging out the washing, just walking in general etc.

I’m just over the 6 month mark now and this whole pregnancy has been so different to my first. Still as beautiful just not the same.

I knew it would be different but I didn’t realise it would only really hit me now that I’m 3 – 4 months away from popping out another.

I don’t feel as stressed as I did the first time. In fact, I’m feeling a lot more calmer and prepared then I did in the months leading up to Maksim’s birth, which is strange because technically I feel like Maksim takes up all my time and I’m not resting as often as I would like.

So you would think that because of not much rest and chasing around another baby it would be more stressful, but it’s done the opposite for me.

I think maybe because Mak takes up all my time, I haven’t got time to think about the stressful intricacies of a newborn baby and what that could hold for me and our family dynamic. ( breastfeeding again, sleepless nights, two children to look after, etc.)

I’m taking things in my stride and I feel much more comfortable about it and I know deep within me that I’m going to be fine.

Since these thoughts have sprung, we are making a start on clearing out our 3rd bedroom to make way for another child’s room, which makes things exciting again and gives me the space to think about him.

So you could say the nesting has finally begun and I’ve started to imagine what it’s going to be like having a newborn around again.

The little cries, the memorable scent, the little tiny clothes, it makes my heart sing just thinking about it!!

If this baby is anything like what we truly value in a new little being, which of course he will be, we are going to have some blissful moments that are bursting with love!

Thinking out loud about this has me truly excited to meet my next little precious bundle, despite my claims of forgetting about him sometimes. You never truly forget, you just get distracted.

We can’t wait to meet you little man 💓

In this piece I’ll be sharing my experiences about friendships and relationships with people.

The last few years, I have learnt a lot about myself and others and am still learning more and more about it each day.

It’s known by many influential philosophers that people walk in and out of our lives at certain times to teach us lessons about ourselves.

This statement above had me so confused for many years, because I’ve seen, felt and experienced so much heart ache in friendships and relationships and I wondered why on earth it kept on happening, what the hell was it teaching me?

Now lets be real, it was teaching me lessons I needed to learn to be a better friend and a better human.

I have had the courage to look back on many past friendships with people and wondered how things went wrong.

I was never the type of girl that had one huge friendship group, I always had different friends from different places. Though I always admired people who were in friendship groups & how they managed their relationships and worked through things.

In some stages of my life, I was a part of many friendship groups but none that lasted the test of time.

The ones I did experience, I felt and witnessed not all those who were friends were there for the right reasons, by my standards and how I valued them anyway.

I always felt conflicted.

There have been times in friendships that I have been the friend I thought they wanted, but then when I expressed my authentic and true self, I was rejected and completely dropped. Most of the time without any explanation.

And in all honesty this one hurt the most.

Because I thought “I accept you for who you are, why can you not accept me. What did I do wrong?”

I’ve done this on several occasions, where I have thought I was doing the right thing by them, but in turn end up walking away with a target on my back.

Some friendship failures, I know I have contributed to and in the past I have lowered my thought patterns to seek validation from others.

My thought process in those times were thinking that, “they might like me if they think I “think” like this” and usually they are based on negative gossip.

And when I have done this, the friendships have failed and never really reached any depth. It was fake.

I used to wonder why I yearned so much to be validated by people that didn’t care much for me and were constantly consumed by others and what they thought of each other.

But in truth, I wasn’t validating myself.

I was seeking validation outside of myself instead of offering my true self to people that actually cared.

I was setting low standards for myself, I wasn’t giving myself the respect I deserved and I know universally this happens to many people.

We all have these thoughts of wanting to be accepted and as the saying goes “we accept the love we think we deserve. ”

I have been told that I’m too “sensitive”, that I’m “just too much for some people” and that ” I read into things” too much.

Receiving comments like that just made me realise, they were actually validating my experience.

It gave me insight on how I was perceived by that particular person or group.

In all honesty, with my life experience and what I know about people so far.

I learnt very well how to read between the lines of body language and someone’s emotional thoughts.

Which is what we all project out into the world, whether we like it or not.

Now, I’m no magician and I do not practice or indulge in witchcraft but I’m a very empathetic human being, I feel what someone’s feeling without them telling me. Negative or positive. It can be both a blessing and somewhat exhaustingly draining.

But it does help me deconstruct my perception on someone’s personality and what they project out into the world. In essence, it’s usually a really good bullshit detector.

It took me a long time to realise I just needed to accept myself and that those who were meant to be in my life would show up.

And living by this rule, I have cultivated beautiful friendships with very like minded people.

I stopped looking for friendships in places that I thought were good for me and started listening to my intuition and opened my heart to the right people.

I spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts through meditation, writing, ridding myself of toxic relationships & debriefing (venting) with my authentic and amazing friends that came into my life.

By doing this, my life started to make a trail of its own, instead of being concerned about what others think of me, I started to be concerned about what I thought of me and watering my own grass and planting my own seeds and my life started to blossom.

Don’t get me wrong, I still face some of these challenges in life today.

After all, we as human beings will forever be making these perceptions about others and ourselves throughout our life.

But learning to understand that you are the centre of it and that you are the one in control of how you deal with these challenges, is how you will overcome them.

Just remember that we are all connected and everyone we know and meet are serving a purpose. Good or bad.

It’s to help you learn, grow and blossom.

Lots of love

Fe

After having some time to read back my own story, it’s given me more time to reflect on the release I just encountered.

It was a strange feeling but it felt amazing to share my journey & I felt nothing but love from everyone I shared it with and I’m thankful for those who decided to enter my journey and live it for a moment or two.

I felt some of the details of my past didn’t need to be written, as they are sacred to me and in truth some things I’m still healing from.

What I have been taught so far is that all of us humans are working on ourselves and it’s a continuous thing. It never ends.

We all learn things at different times of our lives and some lessons are repeated until you understand and allow yourself to grow from it and to make better choices for yourself.

When you grow from what you’ve encountered, instead of being in the chaos of the situation that is occurring to you, you’ll actually see options and start seeing the perspectives of everyone involved. You’ll make a choice and decide if it’s going to better yourself or will it do the opposite.

I think we can all stand and say at one time or another, we have contributed to our own misery in stages of our life, but being aware of that and forgiving yourself is what truly allows you to move forward.

I’ve always been a big believer in owning up to my faults in everything I do.

Work wise, relationship wise etc. if I’ve messed up somewhere, I like people to be honest with me and in turn be honest with myself and help myself to become aware of how and why I did it.

Doing this helps me learn and grow. I do this internally all the time and I believe that’s what helps me remain positive in different aspects of my life and helps me overcome difficulties I have faced.

This life game has its roller coaster times but I really wouldn’t have it any other way, life would be pretty darn boring if we knew everything!

So try to live your struggles kindly and know that it will pass once you have learnt from it.

It’s all about the blossom baby 💓

“It takes courage to grow up and be who you are” – E.E Cummings

Love Fe

xoxo

In the weeks leading up to my mothers passing, we were living in a two bedroom unit that had no aircon and we were having heat waves of 41 degrees daily that week.

We had been in the unit for a month or so and my mum had only stayed in the house for a couple days before being admitted into the ICU part of the hospital, where she stayed for her remaining time.

I had recently finished repeating my year 11 VCE with the goal of getting into university and I was just about to continue to year 12, but knowing where mum was, I knew that my future was put on hold.

I had a feeling she wasn’t coming home.

I was working at Coles at the time doing casual work and I remember getting home, sweltering from the heat inside the house and something came over me and I fell to my knees.

I started to cry, the cry turned into a howl & I begged my mum not to leave me. I knew she was gone before she had even passed away.

That’s when her death became a surreal part of my experience, I knew my life was about to change again.

Where was I going to go? What was I going to do?

I was in a toxic relationship that didn’t help my situation.

I surrounded myself with people that weren’t good for me. I was completely broken and I fell into a deep hole of darkness.

A week after my mother’s funeral, my uncle passed away in his sleep.

This was a complete shock, he was married to my Aunty on my dad’s side.

I couldn’t believe such a beautiful, hard working, sincere man had gone without warning.

My heart sunk for my Aunty and my cousins as I knew of the grief they were about to experience, nothing could ever prepare you for the loss of a parent.

It was then at my uncles wake that my Dad broke down to me and asked for me to move in with him and his new family.

Dad told me that he would figure out a way it would all work.

He bought a house big enough for me to move into and spent weeks renovating it after working 16 hour shifts at his work.

He really moved fast to try and get it all ready for us.

I had to adjust to living with a family unit again and learn how to live with people I felt I didn’t know. It wasn’t easy.

I was so fond of my baby brother, he was such a gorgeous baby and his cuddles and smiles would lighten my days.

I saw his innocence that I had within myself & that comforted me in times I really needed.

Soon after my baby sister was born, she too gave the best cuddles and smiles.

I now had two adorable siblings that I could share my love with.

But life was still tough, I was grieving.

I would sleep for days, I wouldn’t get out of bed and I hardly ate.

My dad was concerned and spoke to the family.

My cousin whom I’m still close with today, suggested I go see a friend of the family for reiki, she didn’t really explain in detail what it was but I was open to anything to help stop feeling the mental pain I was feeling.

This was my first ever encounter of spiritual healing. It was something I had never felt before and it honestly gave me the loving feeling I so desperately needed.

I continued seeing our family friend throughout my years and still do today.

A year after starting my reiki sessions, I made the decision to drop the toxic relationship I was in and I decided to travel to Thailand for a month on my own.

It was the whole I need to find myself experience. I booked the trip after my 21st birthday and believed I was leaving behind a life that no longer served me and I was preparing to change my life for the better.

Reiki helped me believe that my mums presence was always around me and I could connect with my mum at anytime.

In the quiet moments I had in Thailand with my self and my thoughts, I reflected on my life and what I wanted for my future. It was a chance to start a new.

When I got back, I still had friends that lingered around toxic groups and I wasn’t prepared to let them all go.

That was until I met Lucas.

Lucas honestly swept me off my feet, this 6’4ft handsome young man had eyes for me and he drew me in.

I couldn’t resist this guys charm and I don’t think anyone had ever listened to my life the way he did. He saw me, for who I was.

I could tell there was more to him but it wasn’t until we were 12 months deep into our relationship that I started to see the signs, that he also wasn’t in the best mental space.

We were young and partying reached a whole new level.

It took us a very long time to get our relationship to where it is today but I knew my heart was completely invested in this man.

I saw a future with him and I knew that he needed guidance and a hand in the right direction to reach his own secure path and he deserved it all.

When we made the decision to grow our lives together, we made a promise to each other that we would always remain honest, that we always would have each other’s back and would pull each other into line when it was needed.

My grandmother believes that we were sent to each other for a reason and that my mother had been watching over me and guided me to this family.

Throughout the years of being with Lucas, I developed a strong bond with his parents, they took me in as one of their own and provided a nurturing environment that helped both Lucas and I thrive.

It was the first time in my life that I finally had stability, a family unit that cared for my existence and they made it known to me. I’ll be forever grateful for those times.

Now, almost 9 years on, I have my own family. The hard work still continues, but it’s no where near as sad as it once was.

I have a strong and healthy relationship with my husband, a beautiful, happy and healthy baby boy and another one on the way.

I believe I’ve done my best with the cards I’ve been dealt.

I can proudly say that I’m not perfect and I have made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I have learnt from every single one of them and will continue to do so.

I could have made so many different choices and went down several different paths, but I choose to be better.

I chose not to be a victim of my past or my future, but to grow from it instead.

I chose that I deserve happiness.

I chose to be kind hearted and a generous person.

I chose to be authentic and truthful to everyone I know and everyone I meet.

And I choose to treat people with the respect they deserve.

I don’t carry the bitterness of what my life has served, instead I wear those experiences as a badge of honour and say that I survived and I will continue to survive in world that is rough and uncertain.

I vow to keep serving myself with the love and respect that I deserve and I vow to do the same for the people around me.

I also vow to protect myself and my family from those that may not have the best intentions and walk away when necessary.

It’s not so much about the sadness in my story, it’s about how I rose above it all and will continue to do so in my life.

I hope I have been inspiring enough to show that you are the maker of your own destination and you choose where you want to go and how to live it.

I hope you choose to do it with love above all.

Fe

Xoxo

I’ve always known I was different from those that were around me from a young age.

I was born into a family that was already a little “more” than your average.

My mum was 12 years older than my Dad. She had two children from a previous marriage who were 12 and 10 years of age when I was born and my dad was brought up in a very strong willed Italian family.

You could imagine the type of talk that happened in those days, my Nonna was devastated. This older woman marrying her youngest child.

At the time, it was something that could not be accepted.

But my parents persisted and they got married.

When I was born, I have this feeling that I maybe I brought the families together (or I like to think that I did) That’s what a newborn child tends to do, it brings out the warmer side of people.

I can’t recall a time that I felt I wasn’t loved by my dad or my dad’s side of the family, I always felt that I belonged no matter the circumstance and that has been felt right through to my adulthood.

Starting from the the age of 3, life gave me its first experience into relationship turmoil.

My parents divorced. Me and my mum went to Malta and stayed with my grandparents for a few months, the purpose I guess was for mum to recover from the heartache.

She never really did recover, because she loved my dad with all that she had.

But before long, My parents got back together and my mum soon discovered she had a brain tumour the size of a mandarin growing inside her head.

I was 5 years old at the time. I had just started primary school, and I was still trying to understand what was happening to my parents, let alone thinking my mother could possibly die.

But my mother did recover and successfully had the tumour removed.

In those years of recovery, my parents really tried to give me the best life they could.

I loved to dance & perform so my mum put me into a dancing school near home and I really excelled in class.

Dancing gave me a lease on life and I could be my complete self. It was something just for me, that I could turn to.

As the years went on, I was growing up and starting to understand a lot more that went on around me. My parents, in a desperate attempt to make things right, eloped in Hawaii. That was the year 2000.

In 2001, my mum became ill again, it felt like it was overnight. Her spleen enlarged to the size of a football.

She had it removed but not long after, the doctors discovered something more sinister and that my mother had developed cancer. A bone marrow cancer seperate from leukemia but a cancer that was similar and at the time only 50 people in the world had this type.

Again my world started to change, I was developing into a young woman, starting my puberty years, I stopped dancing because it was a strain on my mums health and something we could no longer commit to due to her hospital schedules and emergency run ins.

I started high school with the world on my shoulders. My father came to a point that he could no longer cope with my mums illness and the stress and thought it was best to leave. So he did.

To say my start to high school was tough, would be an understatement. I was bullied from the beginning and had rumours spread around like wild fire, but one day I had enough, I snapped back and started to stand up for myself and the feelings I felt on the inside became a hard exterior on the outside and people started to back off.

I had to stand up for myself, because my world at home was destroyed and I had to survive through these years at high school and it was an absolute challenge. But something I accepted.

I felt I was completely misunderstood by so many of my peers but had a selected few that stood by my side after knowing who I truly was and what I was going through.

Me and my dad rarely spoke or saw each other through these times and he found someone new along the way.

I was angry at him for a long time, no fault of my mums. She would encourage me to see him but I was hurting too gravely and too young to understand his perception on things.

As the years went on, my mum went into remission a few times and we moved houses a lot because she couldn’t afford the rentals on her own. Life was tough.

But my mum always supported and gave me optimism that things would work itself out and she taught me to remain strong and to understand that life changes and the best you can do is to remain resilient in those times. And that’s what I did.

After my 18th birthday in 2007, my mums health declined.

She could no longer continue the cancerous battle and gave her last breath January 14th 2008.

Mums passing in the end was expected but how I was going to live my life without her was another story.

My life from then changed forever and will be continued in my next piece.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about my next story and who I was going to be collaborating with.

I have many beautiful women around me and their amazing life stories will be featured.

But after much deliberation and some self healing work, I have decided that before anything else, my story needs to be written first.

When I think about it for long enough, it can be a fearful process to tell your truth and what you have been through.

It’s a sacred part of you, that you know and feel and doesn’t want to be judged or criticised because it’s such a raw piece of your existence.

When you get to this point, it’s about opening up your heart space and beaming that love light to its absolute fullest.

Im looking forward to sharing more about my experience and what The Woman X Collective is really all about.

Watch this space,

Fe xx