Sounds cold and reptilian doesn’t it . . . ?
Well it was. That was me. I had built my life around being the perfect fit-in chameleon. It was like I could smell how people felt and what they needed and wanted, and I would adapt myself to fit that picture. I did it with different groups of friends and in relationships I would mould myself as the perfect girlfriend and fit to what I thought was needed.
I would use this talent in bed as well, to make sex amazing for my partners, as I instinctively knew what they liked. However, I would then be left feeling the emptiness of the lack of connection and then resent my partner and the relationship.
My relationships would only last about 3 to 6 months. I would get over playing the role and I would start to feel that something was missing here: I was missing just being me! All the “I love you’s” I had said and the care I had shown was empty, as it was never really me. I had been living with that emptiness within my relationships for so long, with partners and in friendships alike.
I didn’t know who I was anymore: I was interchanging so much I had no memory of me and what it was like to just be me.
Through a friend I met an amazing woman, Natalie Benhayon, who has continued to be a true role model for me. I began attending healing sessions with Natalie and found working with her was supporting me to come back to re-connecting with myself after all these years. I was receiving bodywork regularly, but even just simply talking honestly about how I was feeling as a woman helped me discover more of who I really am . . . beneath the Chameleon.
As I have learnt to build trust in myself and to open up and share not only with Natalie but with many other close friends on a deep level, I have developed and grown to be my own woman, something I had long left behind.
Now I have been re-finding me, getting to know myself deeply, not in the fluffy spiritual sense, but in a simple ways, like:
- Taking myself on lots of first dates
- Finding out what I like to eat
- Discovering what places I like to go to
- Exploring what perfumes I like to wear
- Learning what music I really like
- Discovering how I laugh and smile for me, not for everyone else.
Just being me is like finding the rainbow complete with the pot of gold at the end. I have found the Holy Grail . . . the familiar feeling of running into an old friend, Me!! I now have a sense of not needing to look outside of me anymore to make myself feel loved.
I am enjoying the imperfect and sometimes wobbly process of my rebuilding, looking back at where I was and where I am now and where I will be. I cannot help but smile when I look at how far I have come. I am looking forward to the next steps – like a gardener who keeps adding to and maintaining the beautiful space that has been created.
The beautiful, tender, delicate and super scrumptious woman I am has been hidden under that yucky self-made reptilian chameleon coat for too long. Inspired by Natalie Benhayon’s example, I have realised that I can uncover the real me by simply re-connecting deeply with myself and the woman I truly am.
I have found enjoyment in the small things, like asking myself what I want to eat and cooking yummy foods, taking time in the mornings and not rushing out the door, spending those small moments appreciating who is looking back at me in the mirror. This has been a world of discovery, seeing my beautiful playful face in the mirror and enjoying me.
It has really been great to meet people when I am feeling so amazing and to have them light up when they spend time with me, as me . . . My relationships with others have changed, I am more open to enjoying another person’s company with ease as I now have the confidence to just be me.
Over the past few years Natalie Benhayon has been a true inspiration and role model of how to be a real woman. Her strength and powerful emanation of a woman is something I know I also have equally, but over the years had forgotten. The more I connect to the true me, the more I can feel the old falling away and the true me beaming through. As I live from this I can see all women have the same innate tenderness, power and strength; it has just been forgotten and buried under the ideals of what we believe society wants us to be.
By Nicole Wise, Student, Northern Rivers
Further Reading:
What Happens When You Meet Natalie Benhayon?
What Defines a True Woman? – Returning to Be-You-Ty
