I HATED MY BROWN SKIN ☹️

They would throw rocks at me and call me names because of my skin colour..

When I was about 12 I moved to a small country town. I didn’t know until I moved there that there was something “wrong’ with the colour of my skin.

By wrong, I meant It was different than all the other kids. Mine was naturally olive and when summer hit and the temperature was 40 degrees each day, my skin would go really brown.

Never in my life had I thought about this or noticed it, until I moved to this little country town.

Everyone else had skin that was white and their hair was blonde or red. Never in my life would I have even noticed that mine was different to theirs.

Until… one day the boys in the town started calling me names referring to my skin colour.

They would chase me around on my bike and throw rocks at me and scream insults at me😕

I didn’t understand!!! Somehow my skin colour was dirty and bad and wrong. It was making people angry and it was making them throw rocks at me and tease me.

It was my summer skin that seemed to make them the maddest!!!!

I started to HATE my SKIN… I would scrub it with a scrubbing brush to try and make it whiter.

I would wear a jumper all summer so my arms didn’t go brown.

I would wear a hat and while I walked to school I would put my folder over my face to stop the sun hitting it.

I would yell at my Dad for giving me “this skin”..

I demand that there had to me some product we could buy to turn my skin white like theirs.

I hated my skin….

I hated it until I moved away and went to University.

People would start to say “I love your tan” I was shocked and thought they must be teasing me in a different way.

More and more people were complimenting my skin. People were telling me “ I pay for skin your colour”. Apparently they got this thing called a spray tan”. Who knew that was a thing???

Suddenly I felt comfortable in my skin, I took off my jumper and I embraced my tan with every part of my being.

I wore dresses and singlets. I’d get excited at the first hint of spring, because I could throw on a skirt and tan those legs.

I began to look after my skin, I would exfoliate it and moisturise it and let it out to play 🤣

I guess my Dad didn’t really know how to teach me to love my body for all it was and all I had been given. He was just sad that I hated my skin and he felt kind of guilty that he gave it to me.

The thing is there was never anything wrong with my skin or my body, it was all about the people I was around judging me and casting their opinion on what a body should look like. What was “normal”.

But in a totally different circle of people my skin was worshipped and the way I felt about myself suddenly changed.

My value was tied to other peoples opinions of what was good or bad.

But the reality was my skin was never “right or wrong, good or bad” it just was.

I could not change it, but when I felt like there was something “wrong” with it, I started to hate it, hid it away and didn’t look after it.

A huge life lesson here, is that we have to love and accept ourselves exactly as we are. I teach my daughter to love her body and herself for all that she is, exactly how she is and to embrace and look after every part of her.

I teach my clients to love their body and honour their body and respect their bodies for all that they are.

When they are pregnant we spent a lot of time talking about how incredible and amazing their bodies are, the incredible powerhouse that they are and to embrace their changing body and shape, because it is through these changes that we are able to grow a human inside of us.

When they love their bodies for all that they do and are capable of they start to look after their body a lot differently.

They eat and exercise from a place of love and respect for their body and it totally changes everything. They carry a different kind of confidence that is sexy AF!!! And that carries over into motherhood. Just like when I started to love and accept my skin colour I started to look after It better.

Often I see women who “hate” what having kids has done to their body. As mums they start to resent their body. They hid it away, they hid from photos, they go on diets “to punish their body” or they do a workout “to smash their body”, because they deem it as “bad” because it doesn’t look like the other bodies. The fact is every body is beautiful. I get women to see this.

I work with these women to love their body for all it is and all it has done and all it is capable of. When a women can change her mindset around her body, the way she fuels her body, the way she moves her body, the way she looks after her body totally changes.

In my circle these women feel beautiful. These women LOVE, HONOUR and RESPECT their bodies and that ripples out to everyone and everything in their life.

Often Mums are sitting in circles where they are viewing their body as “bad, or wrong or gross”, but just like when I changed circles and went to university and those new people got me to “love my skin” and see its beauty, that is what I do for Mums and Pregnant Women. I

It’s a total re-education of the body and mind…

And she emerges as this healthy, happy, confident women, who loves the body she in.

Because loving yourself, accepting yourself for exactly who you are and loving all parts of you is where true peace and fulfilment come from.

In my work, I break that cycle for women so they can finally get off the weight loss roller coaster and step into a place where everything becomes about LOVING every part of you and making choices from a place of LOVE, not punishment or deprivation.

People will always judge and have an opinion, and we cant change that. Society, social media, advertising all portray “what is beautiful” through their own lenses and own views.

Just like the kids in that little country town viewed my skin as “BAD” as they looked through their own lenses of what skin “should” look like.

What we can change is how we view ourselves and how we treat ourselves and when we love, honour and respect our body and build a great relationship with it, it totally changes our life.

It becomes freeing, and it breaks generations of health trauma and warped societal views on how a body should look.

And that my friends is the greatest gift I can give my daughter, my clients and their children.

If you are ready to start doing things a little differently, and need some help learning how to love, honour and respect your body and build a great relationship with it, chat with me here.

I’ll ask you a few quick questions over messenger to see if you are a good candidate to get the best result. If yes, I’ll invite you in. The enrolment process takes just a few minutes and we can get you into the Fabulous As F*ck Mastermind Group, where you’ll get immediate access to me and my focused attention and coaching and we’ll get you on my schedule ASAP!!

Julie xx