Live big, love big

In September 2017, I spent 1 week alone in a villa in Greece. Just me, gathering my thoughts and putting them on paper.
When I spoke to my dear friend, Annelies a few weeks ago about creating a Safari Experience for women, I remembered this passage, I wrote in my notebook sitting in the middle of nowhere in Greece;
"What intrigues me the last few days is how much I enjoy people. Connecting to people. Where I've always felt more connected to the natural world and its clear structure, lack of hidden agendas, what you see is what you get and honest, authenticity. People are messy, difficult, sneaky and often dishonest. They're also fun, crazy, loving, caring partners that can inspire and make waves. What good would all these positive traits be when they cannot be put to use. Light does not exist without darkness. I sometimes struggle with darkness, and can get totally overwhelmed by its intensity. Shy away from it, hide it.

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Protecting myself and others from it. The only reason I can love BIG, live BIG is because I've also experienced the darkness. I've spiralled down the abyss of my own misery more than once. Not knowing how to handle whatever event there was at the time. I'd retract into my own little world. Overeat, letting darkness engulf me fully. Sometimes it's minutes, sometimes days, other times it took me years. 
Yet always there's a turning point. A point where enough is enough, a point where I decide to puncture the tiniest hole into that dark  tube of misery and I cling onto that little light for dear life. It takes me months to get to it, make the hole bigger and bigger. Months in which I sometimes get dragged back hard into misery, sadness and at other times I feel like I'm flying. I'll allow myself to recharge my batteries every flying moment I have. Getting stronger, more able to fend off the dark every time. Until I'm out again and once again can live BIG, love BIG.
That's when I gather people around me. People that inspire me, give me joy. People I can support, I can put smiles on their faces. It's really, honestly nature that I go to, to reflect. To puncture the darkness, to regain my zest for life. But it's the people that make me want to stay in the light. It's what I can mean to them. The difference I can make on people's lives, not nature. It has to be women: empowering women. Creating a movement that'll allow women to celebrate their being, life, sexuality and strength. A platform that is real and shares realness. No place for fitting in, making ourselves match people's expectations, no place for keeping ourselves small. It must be radical, fun and honest. I must share my experiences, my life, my mistakes, my triumphs. Women being suppressed happens only to the extent we'll allow it to happen. We always have a choice: a choice on how to behave, how to respond, how to be. It's all our choice. We can overcome, we can overturn. we can influence and create massive change. It's not the small steps we miss along the way that hold us back. it's the BIG leaps we're too afraid to take.

The time is now: it's time to be BIG!

I AM FREE"