For years I’ve been trying to work out what I want to do with my life, what my actual purpose is. Some people have their shit together right from the start, like literally from the day they’re born. Me, I thought I had it all worked out, then life decided to throw me a giant curve ball and all of that changed! All through secondary school I had dreamt of joining the Army, I had it all worked out, the perfect way of escaping the torture. I could run away and never come back, put the past behind me and look to the future. That all changed when I met a boy, well a man; I was 16 and he was 21. I spent every minute I could at his house just to be away from my parents. Then things got way too intense and I called it off. I wasn’t used to people being nice to me and it totally freaked me out. The sad thing is, at that point, he’d actually done nothing wrong. A month later, I found out I was pregnant and that was the dream well and truly over. Fast forward 20 odd years and here I am, sat at my kitchen table with a cake in the oven, writing this post and still trying to come up with a name for the blog.

You see life dealt me a pretty rubbish set of cards; my childhood was mostly spent feeling pretty shit to be fair, largely because I was repeatedly made to feel like I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough or clever enough, I wasn’t brave enough or strong enough. I simply wasn’t enough. I had a childhood of being emotionally abused (as my therapist puts it) by the people who should have loved me the most, the people I should have been able to trust more than anybody else in the whole world, the people who should have nurtured me and guided me into the person I am today – my parents! And when I wasn’t being subjected to abuse from my parents, I was being bullied by the kids at school for not looking right or acting the way they did. You see, growing up, I was one of the troubled kids. I played up at school because I so desperately wanted somebody to realise the hell I was going through and just how rubbish I felt, both about myself and life in general. All it actually did though was made me feel a million times worse! I’d get into trouble at home because I wasn’t pulling my weight at school and I’d get bullied more at school because people just didn’t get me.

I’ve grown up believing that I am fat and ugly, that I am worth nothing and do not deserve good things in life and I will never achieve anything. The simple fact is, I’m not good enough.

So here I am, in the midst of a global Coronavirus pandemic and a 3 day mental meltdown, and it suddenly occurs to me, I know exactly what my purpose in life is. I am here to help people like me, people who feel like they’ve been to hell and back (the story has only just begun!) a million times over and don’t know how to break the viscous cycle of depression and self loathing. I am here to share my story and invite you to follow my journey, with all its twists and turns, from depression and self loathing to happiness and self love.