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
653 Comments
Living as a chameleon is a way of hiding ourselves to avoid intimacy
“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.” I can so relate, it is having role models in our lives like Natalie Benhayon that show us that it is ok and perfectly natural to be our whole and true self.
“Just being me is like finding the rainbow complete with the pot of gold at the end. I have found the Holy Grail ” Beautiful Nicole nothing in the world beats being ourselves.
When everyone is trying to ‘fit in’ with everyone else, no one knows who they are.
When we step through the mirage of our own and other’s expectations we meet the essence of who we are.
This is beautiful to read Nicole, and so inspiring, ‘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.’
Getting to know ourselves and our true and authentic expression gives other people the opportunity to truly get to know us as well rather than the mask we think they want to see…
Natalie Benhayon has been such a big inspiration for me too – I think it’s super rare these days for someone to be so content and so embracing of who they are and also how wonderful that is – it’s incredibly inspiring, and it actually gives you permission to feel the same way about yourself.
Thanks Nicole, I’m sure it’s quite common for people to change themselves and go along with whoever they are with and in the process bury who they are. We are not really a society that honours who people are, more so what people do including what they can do for others. Just being ourselves almost sounds simplistic, yet I know from my own experience it’s also the most powerful medicine for a healthy and joy filled life. Having to wear a mask takes a lot of energy so just being ourselves takes a lot of pressure and stress off the body. We also deeply miss who we are when we are unable to just be our natural selves.
Previously I would identify with what I did. Now I have more experience being me does the old way of identifying myself shows up as being disturbing/upsetting etc.
It is no wonder that so many women, including me, end up living a chameleon-type existence, as all around us the world is telling us who we should be, ably supported by the media with endless glitzy magazines, adorned with perfect air brushed faces staring out from every corner store. It feels to me that we become the chameleon because it is way too hard to be us. That’s why I absolutely love Natalie Benhayon and the self-confirming messages she is always sharing with other women. She has inspired me, and so many other women, to peel back our very ingrained layers of protection and to embrace and adore the beautiful woman waiting to shine
Natalie is such an inspiration and forever stepping up to what is next needed, ‘She has inspired me, and so many other women, to peel back our very ingrained layers of protection and to embrace and adore the beautiful woman waiting to shine’.
There is something so solid and appealing about someone who is themselves no matter who they are with, myself I have always been some what a of chameleon too though this is changing super fast as I claim more and more of who I am.
A beautiful reflection of how amazing and empowering it is to re-establish an honoring relationship with who we are within, our essence as we discover that this relationship is the key to experiencing what true love is and knowing that we don’t need to be anything other than who we are. It is then in sharing this love that is a joy to bring to all our relationships whether is it received or not.
We can be truly inspired when we have role models who are living the truth of who they are in full.
It find it very interesting how it can be the very sensitive ones of our world who feel that they need to chameleonise themselves the most. Ironically using their sensitivities to hide and at times manipulate. What is fascinating too though, and as I understand the Esoteric to be, is how it is this very sensitivity which lives within each person, therefore, are we not all just chameleonising ourselves to avoid a major fact about life here on Earth – namely that we are all connected indeed as a one brotherhood, regardless of the surface image that each person projects?
Thank you for sharing the truth with those around you and with us and paying such a lovely tribute to the awesome Natalie Benhayon who has inspired countless other women including myself to set out on this journey of exploration and celebration of ourselves and our true identity as the gorgeous women that we are.
Totally agree Helen – Natalie Benhayon is lighting the way of what it is to live the essence, the sacredness of a women and inspiring many women to reignite their connection to their innate sacredness and live the power of who they are – that which is then a lived reflection for many others to also be inspired by.
The beautiful thing about it is that it’s a discarding process, a letting go of everything we’ve taken on to discover the many wonderful and adore-worthy qualities within. We are not truly empty, not enough, or need to become something, as we are already everything within ourselves.
Well said Helen – thank god for women like Natalie Benhayon who are prepared to go there in their own journey of exploring who they are so everyone else can see what is possible.