Sailing around the world... to come home to myself
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Sailing around the world... to come home to myself
I grew up sailing around the world; in fact I spent 24 years of my life travelling, until I came home to myself.
My parents built their own 46ft gaff rig ketch in their back yard in Brisbane and we moved on board when I was about 6 months old. They had this idea that they would sail around the world and be back in Australia in time for my brother and me to go to school: 24 years later I made it back to the land down under.
I didn’t go to school much as we were sea gypsies and always on the move until we found a country that we liked, and my mum or dad would find work. They would work until we had enough money and food to get to the next destination, or the weather was right for the next leg of the journey. It was a simple life, but not always easy. Life on the big ocean can be a test and challenging at times. We owned no TV or fridge, we washed our clothes by hand, carried our water and we lived life on a budget. Always!
It was not until I was 9 years old that I really wanted to go to school; I desperately wanted to be normal.
People would ask me if I knew how to read or write because I hadn’t been to school, but that wasn’t an issue for me as I had always loved to write from a young age. My mum was a journalist for a yachting magazine and I used to sit and write with her, and was given my first typewriter when I was about five years old. I learnt Maths from navigating and measuring amounts of ingredients etc. when cooking, and Science was often a favourite subject when we caught fish and gutted them, looking at what they had been eating. I learnt History from all the places we visited and the people we met, and Geography was easy... I didn’t read about the destinations, I visited them. I learnt to speak bits of Hebrew, Arabic, Dutch, Italian and German, I am fluent in French and Spanish, and my English isn’t too bad. I loved art and would spend hours drawing and painting. I also loved massaging people’s feet, and started this when I was quite young.
My classroom away from the conventional educational system was great, but in my head I had a belief that I had missed out and was uneducated because I had not gone through the regular schooling system.
How wrong I was, but I had to go to school to learn and appreciate what I did already know.
I went to high school in the Caribbean where I was the only white girl in my class, until the school was severely damaged by a hurricane. Later I owned my own yacht and worked on the super yachts, and soon realised that even if you were super rich and had it all, it didn’t always mean you were happy.
I travelled some more, through the Caribbean, and to Canada, and then through parts of the South Pacific, until when I was in my early twenties, and pregnant with my daughter Ocean, I started to live on land. I got into massage, Reiki and all kinds of different forms of healing and meditation, and I studied for a diploma in Herbal Medicine. My drive for this was based on another belief that I had to have a degree in something to be someone, and to be able to offer a future for my daughter.
Even though I studied health, I still drank alcohol, smoked, and had a pretty unhealthy diet and it was therefore not surprising that despite all the healing courses, meditations and chanting, along with my diploma in Herbal Medicine, it made no difference; something was just not quite right.
I didn’t trust people, I was quite cold and harsh with the way I talked to people, always keeping my walls of protection up and not really letting anyone get to know me, except for a very select few.
When I first arrived back in Australia when I was 29, I was a single parent living on the benefit and lived from week to week without any real goals in life. I was proud that I didn’t work hard and shopped at Op shops. I drank quite a bit, and still smoked a lot. I would wake feeling groggy, and I was often depressed. I had been sexually molested as a child and didn’t realise at the time how that was a scar that I carried with me for a lot of my life, along with a few other hurts that I accumulated along the way.
I had always wanted a horse... of course the grass is always greener on the other side and as a teenager I was super jealous of all the kids that had riding lessons and their own pony. I worked for my lessons as a stable hand and got into competing. Horses were my income and my life for quite some time and when I moved back to Australia, I bought myself a horse for my 30th birthday and shortly thereafter I got a pony for my daughter. It took about 2 years to realise that the dream and fantasy of having a horse was much better than the reality. All my money was being spent on the animals and I didn't have enough to go to the dentist, and once I realised my addiction to horses and worked through that, then I chose to sell them. I never imagined working without horses, but today I can see that it is one of the best choices I ever made. Horses were hard on my body, just like sailing. There is no way to lift a 20 Kg bag of food gently and to honour my female body in that line of work, but it was via the horses that I met a friend who introduced me to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. This was a major turning point in my life.
Meeting Serge Benhayon and his family has been one of the best things that has happened to me.
Everything that Serge presented to me made sense; he never told me what to do, but offered such a strong reflection that I was so inspired by that I stopped drinking alcohol, stopped smoking, started working, taking more responsibility for my life rather than feeling like it was all just a coincidence that I found myself where I was and finally realised that wherever I landed was a result of all my previous choices. I took control over my destiny rather than sitting chanting or wishing life would hand me out a better option.
I had regular Chakra-puncture sessions and then went on to learn all the Universal Medicine Esoteric Healing modalities, and I use them all to this day. Unlike many of the new age therapies that I had tried in the past, these ones made sense, and I was living proof that they worked.
I started Byron Bay Mobile Massage in 2009, which offers massages to locals and tourists visiting the area. I would do the massages on my own, but as the business started to grow and become more and more popular I was able to build a team of therapists who still work together to this day. But massaging was not enough for me, although I still loved it. I wanted to do something more, so I trained in Travel and Tourism and got myself a full-time job at Flight Centre. Later I worked for another online travel company and then eventually started a travel company with some business partners. I had all the knowledge and experience from working within the industry and loved it, but some things didn’t work out between us so that all ended.
Shortly after, I was offered a full-time position for a company that allows me to support disengaged youth, between the ages of 15 and 21, to find employment or to take on some form of training and develop their skills.
I absolutely love this role as I get to work with businesses in our local communities and the young people, encouraging them to make something of their future. Many have dropped out of school, and some have had a tough time, but from my own experiences I am able to relate to them and to share that you don’t have to have finished school to be able to be successful in life. You are more than just what you have done.
Looking back over these 37 years of mine, I can see how much of a natural entrepreneur I have been: I would sell coffee to the fishermen in Israel; sell sea shells here and there; take photos and make cards in the Canary Islands; make jewellery or hair braids; always finding a way to make some money and make ends meet, but for a long time I didn’t really want to commit to anything. I was hoping that things would magically work themselves out, but in reality, I didn’t want to take responsibility and make the changes myself.
Today I am finding my way, with The Way of The Livingness, co-creating my life, working full time Monday to Friday and loving it, as well as running a business and often massaging on the weekend, studying for a diploma in Chakra-puncture, studying at work, being involved in a few voluntary projects where I lead some teams of awesome friends, parenting, and I have just purchased my first home. This has always been a far-away dream that I never thought I would be able to realise without marrying a rich man, but I have been able to save and make it happen. I have come a long way in seven years, from the single mum on a benefit with no money to my name, to where I am today.
I spent a lot of my life sailing around the world and travelling, only to find that the home I was truly searching for was right here in my backyard, in fact, inside myself.
Filed under
Education, Healing, Therapies, Universal Medicine, Healthy diet, Self-love, Massage, Career
