My favourite word when I was a child was IMAGINE.
I didn’t know why, I just loved how I felt whenever I saw it.
One day it came up in class and I told my Media Studies teacher it was my favourite word, he looked at me strangely and said,
“You have a favourite word?”
I said yes and that I had assumed everyone did, the look on his face said otherwise.
He said, “ME TOO, mine is FREAKISH.”
I laughed finding it slightly weird but loved the joy it gave him saying it.
I was always a dreamer, I still am.
I get a vision in my head about the infinite possibilities and my mind runs with a very lavish and grand outcome.
Most people think I am crazy to think so big, but I don’t know any other way.
Even if it’s a platter, a dinner or something that doesn’t even matter… I always have a vision and it’s exquisite.
Sometimes the reality matches the vision and sometimes it doesn’t.
I always get visions about the heartbreak of people close to me dying or something bad happening and I feel the waves it sends throughout my body. I’ve always had that too.
I’ve always just known things, but I learned that I didn’t want to put the mozz on things so I stayed quiet most of the time.
When I moved to Melbourne to rewrite the vision I had always imagined for myself, I was taking action on that knowing I had always had.
I was studying hair and one day I saw a poster of a Cruise Liner in the window of a travel agency. I asked my friend if they had Hairdressers on ships and she said yes.
I felt it, that thing inside of me that tells me my next move. I said, “That’s what I am going to do.”
A month later a lady came to speak to the students about working in the Day Spa on Cruise Ships and that’s exactly what I did. It sounded glamorous, it paid well, it was adventurous and I would know no one!!! This pleased me the most.
When you work on Cruise Ships it’s like moving country, house and starting a job all on the same day. Not to mention they are huge and you can’t get off!
The name of my first Cruise Liner that would be my home for the next 8 months was…
IMAGINATION.
I was scared shitless, but I knew it was my right next move.
It was here I met myself over and over again, mostly, I remembered who I was before I became indoctrinated into a life that was far from the vision I had seen when I was a little girl and one I did not want.
I remembered what it was like to dream and I was reminded that whatever I wanted in this life, I got to choose.
I was free.
Free from all the would’s and should’s.
Free from all the things that people expect me to be and become.
Free for other people’s drama.
Free to be me.
I disrupted the program I had made for myself and began to dream my way into a new reality and once again it was exquisite.
There was no more falling into a life I don’t recognise or don’t want.
No more settling for anything less than I really wanted to do.
No more making the most of the life I have because I forgot my dreams or told myself I didn’t want them anymore.
It’s ridiculous.
20 years later I have crumbled more times than I count.
I have forgotten my dreams and got lost in life more than once.
I have lost myself in life… parenting, business and partnership mostly.
Every time I remember and I come back.
It’s one thing to be free and easy in the middle of the ocean with no obligations, no bills and able to do whatever you want.
It’s another thing to be fully in life, parenting, partnering, serving, doing, being and living.
But that’s what we are here to do right?
Fully immerse ourselves into life, feel fully alive and suck the marrow out of it.
If we’re not fully living, we’re half dead and that’s exhausting!
Bend the rules,
Break the rules,
Create your own rules,
Don’t worry about what other people think,
Don’t mould yourself into life trying to be a “good” Mother, parent, partner, friend, sister or teacher.
The world doesn’t need any more GOOD GIRLS.
We need women who DREAM and IMAGINE.
Who will stop at nothing to transform that image into a dream and that dream into action, and feel fully alive and turned on while we’re doing it.
There is NO OTHER WAY.
OK, there is, but do we really want to look down on this life and see a continual line of UNFULFILLED dreams?
Do we really want to teach our kids to settle into a life and forget their dreams?
HELL NO.
