Prologue

If you’ve ever thought to yourself “I’m not good enough” then keep reading, as this book has been written especially for you, although it wasn’t the one I had intended to write originally.

I began writing as a way to teach others how becoming self-aware and expanding your consciousness are both necessary steps in personal development. Over the previous three years I had been working hard to understand why I seemed to sabotage situations by not expressing how I really felt. I learned this was because, on a subconscious level, I either felt my voice was unworthy of opinion or that if I stood in my truth someone might take offence or feel hurt. This is something I now know that many other women, especially, also feel.

But things changed on a cold, grey day at the beginning of last year when I ended up receiving the most powerful lesson I’ve ever had from the Universe. Just days before I had received the news of the shocking and completely unexpected death of a close friend. She was happily married with a fantastic job and expecting her first child and was the one person who had really helped me come to terms with the passing of my father years before. Her death hit me in a big way and I also ended up grieving for my dad because the way I had dealt with his passing eight years previously was with a combination of red wine and valium so as not to feel anything (and it did work a treat to numb the pain, but it numbed me so much that I didn’t feel anything — and I’m in no way suggesting that anyone else do this). To top it off, I was incredibly sick with a flu-like thing that felt like the chronic fatigue I suffered with for years had come back again.

In what I know now was my ‘dark night of the soul’, I allowed myself to surrender to all my painful feelings, especially those I had about myself. I let the dark and uncomfortable parts of myself that I had been hiding show themselves. It was an extremely uncomfortable few days, and I cried and cried and cried. If I was religious, I probably would have prayed.

Looking up at the moon one night, tears and snot running down my face and not knowing what to do next, I looked up to the sky and asked the Universe for a sign. And then I heard its answer: “Love yourself”.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?



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If you’re anything like many of us walking around on this beautiful planet, loving yourself is something that feels elusive. Something that feels completely out of reach.

As I’ve mentioned, I had been working on my own personal development for a few years and understood self love as a concept. In my head. But it took me being in the depths of yet another dark episode in my life and learning to embrace the situation I found myself in with love that I realised the feeling and completeness that is self love.

So I feel that now is the right time to finally begin giving ourselves some praise. I’ve had my fair share of breakdowns in my (almost) 53 years of life. However, those breakdowns have always led to breakthroughs in my learning and growing process, and they’ve become much more so since I began my self-love journey. But it’s not always been this way for me.

Until only eight years ago, I operated my life from a place called self-hatred. I would never have been able to say that I loved myself. For a lot of that time I didn’t even like myself much, even though I’ve always been the kind of gal who could laugh and have fun — realising that fun and happiness were two very different things was another big lesson I learned from the Universe. However, behind all the laughter I still loathed myself. I hated my body even though I had managed to lose 100lbs. I hated my hair. I hated my teeth. I hated that I wasn’t ‘good enough’.

I basically coped with life, which more often than not was too painful for me to deal with. To dull the pain, I partied and drank far too much alcohol. I took recreational drugs to get high at the weekends. And after the comedowns, I would always feel guilt. And shame. And being not good enough again (even though I always managed to hold down a job and always did it well). But then along would come another Wednesday, Thursday or Friday night and I’d find another party, bar or gig to go to. These were all distraction tactics I used to numb the pain of feeling alone in the world. To numb the pain of hating myself.

This vicious circle went on for decades and included bouts of debilitating illness and disease, which also added to my depression. There were many times suicide crossed my mind and I even made a half-arsed attempt at slashing my wrists in my early 20s (I’m completely grateful now that I didn’t succeed). But it was in finally accepting this dark shadow part of my life, which for years I didn’t want to deal with, that made me realise the importance of total self-acceptance as a way of allowing self-love in.

Most of us begin searching for true love outside of ourselves to make our lives better, but this isn’t where you’re going to ‘find’ it. I believe true love can only be found inside yourself. Loving yourself is the only thing that will bring you real peace in the most important relationship in your life — the one you have with yourself.



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