I was born in 1982 in Cape Town, South Africa – first born of 3 girls to my beautiful Italian Mama. My Dad was born in Derry, Ireland so I’m one of those people who lives in South Africa, by choice – because it’s awesome, but has access to an Italian or Irish passport. Crazy stuff according to the pessimists, apparently I should have left long ago. 🙄

As a young girl I had really curly hair, like no jokes. Here look:

I used to believe that my hair was attached to my head on both sides, so it grew out of my head and then grew back in. I hated my hair from a very young age, because I have a clear memory of my play school teachers telling me that the only way I wouldn’t be in trouble anymore was if I gave them all my hair. It was back in the day when Granny’s all had purple curly hair and perms so they thought my hair was cool. I used to HATE it when they told me that because number 1 – were they stupid? And number 2 – most of the time it wasn’t my fault for being in trouble, it was because some other kid had been talking to me and then I would always land up being the sucker that got caught and they’d never let me explain.

Primary school memories.

There’s always that one teacher that made a difference for you and for me it was Mrs Roland. She set the tone for my self-proclaimed cleverness at school all the way through to high school. She taught us how to ‘study’ in class so that we would never have to study at home over weekends. Sounded good to me so I paid attention and it changed my life. I was naturally clever at most subjects because of the advice she gave us, except for Afrikaans and History – because as a kid I thought both these subjects were a waste of time, but now I’m sorry about that because I wish I knew more about both!

Church days and the fear of God.

When I was a young child my parents became ‘born again Christians’. We went to church every Sunday and when we got a little older it was expected (by the church) that someone would pray for us, we’d fall over shaking and Jesus would come into our bodies and remove all the demons. Well at least that’s what I got from it. It never worked for me, and I really did try. Seriously, I gave it my all. I thought there must be something wrong with me because it never worked and I was always last man standing, either God wasn’t interested in me, or this was fake. Eventually I would just fall over and pretend so I could not look like a chop. Even at such a young age I remember thinking to myself, this is just fucked up. I believed in a higher power, but that was just weird.

‘God’ has always played a major role in my life. I had so many questions on the topic. Like:

If God made everything, who made God?
Why aren’t there dinosaurs in the Bible?
And how could Mary really be a virgin, like come on guys?
And how can you say that and then tell me that thinking aliens exist is crazy when space is basically endless?
And does that make Mary God’s wife?
Isn’t she then a Goddess?
And how do you know God is a man if nobody has ever actually seen God?
Why is it that I feel like girls got the short end of the stick?
Is it because I’ve been told that I will suffer during childbirth because Eve ate the apple?
I thought Jesus died for our sins, this seems a bit unfair?
And on that note, why do you keep telling me a I’m a sinner? Because honestly I felt like a good human until my Sunday school teacher told me that.
And why is it a sin to lose my virginity before I get married but then a murderer or rapist can gain access to heaven by simply “giving his life to the Lord” and asking for forgiveness?
When exactly do I get to have fun?

By the time I was a teenager I was filled with the fear of God. This “loving” scary man, who was watching my every move, judging everything I did. Our school teachers would pound virginity into our heads for the fear of a teenage pregnancy in the school.

Instead of teaching us about our menstrual cycles and what incredible bodies we actually had, how we ovulate each month in preparation for growing a healthy baby one day, almost all of us girls were on the pill by age 14 – because we were told it would “regulate” our periods and take away our pimples and oily skin (normal teenage things). There are so many awful side effects from the pill – it’s no wonder so many women of my generation feel completely out of touch with their bodies and are struggling to fall pregnant – if you’ve blocked ovulation all your life, how is your body meant to know how to ovulate?

Bleeding was considered a mission, not a healthy part of life, and not one of us young girls were taught a thing about the most important upcoming jobs of our lives – to one day be a Mother (should we choose to). Not once, did someone consider that being a Mother might be a part of our future, and that maybe we should be taught about pregnancy, birth options, and how hard it would really be.

We were however taught how to bake cakes in Home Economics, and how to wash up properly after, I’m assuming this was so that we could keep our future husbands happy (let me know how that’s going for you…?)

High school, surfing and Mary Jane.

By 15 I had made up my mind that the majority of the school day was an absolute waste of my time. I couldn’t wait to finish matric and never go to school again. I needed an escape from this groundhog day bullshit, and so surfing and marijuana became my friends. What a combination!

“Hello life, where have you been all my life!” I actually never smoked that much weed as a surfing teen, I didn’t need it because surfing made me so high on life and that’s all I wanted to do, from sunrise to sunset. Surfing became my church. I remember sitting on my board at the backline of the ocean on a Sunday morning and feeling absolutely at peace. I knew then that the ocean and the sun was my version of ‘God’. Cold water, fresh air, the motion of the ocean. It’s all I needed for it all to make sense. There was a God, and this was it.

I soon convinced my Dad that the college right next to the beach was much better than the public school I was going to, and soon after that I convinced him that actually I was so naturally intelligent that home school would be a better choice for me. Boom, done, let the surfing all day begin.

Somehow I managed to get my matric. I literally surfed all year, studied for 4 weeks in September and passed. With an E, but I passed!

Adulting.

So now I had my matric. What next? I needed to choose something to study…. um um hairdresser… interior designer… graphic designer – yes! Graphic designer it was. After 1 year of full working days again I almost died – I bailed out of the 3 year course and found a graphic design job – the plan was to work for some experience just to learn industry and then start my own business and get rich. I lasted a month in that job and then realized that I was really bad at having a boss.

Next job… work in surf shop, get cheap surf gear and surf as often as possible. During this time I bought a little Citi Golf, as you do, and also my first Apple Mac computer, which I still own. Those pretty see-through blue ones. I started doing freelance work on the side and that was the start of my journey as an entrepreneur.

Ireland.

It was 2004 and everyone was going to the UK to work in a pub, earn pounds at an amazing exchange rate and come back and “buy a house”. As my Dad is Irish, I decided Ireland was better than London, plus it had waves, so off we went. It was hard. So hard. Much harder than I thought it would be. But we were young and determined and we made it work, until December, when it got really cold and dark and I got so homesick I just couldn’t take it. I had done 9 months and had really adulted hard, I missed my parents and wanted to come home.

The Magazine.

I never thought I’d write about this again but I realize now that it’s a huge part of my story. On return from Ireland I went straight down to my local surf spot – I was so excited to get back into our ‘warm’ Cape Town water. I was only away for 9 months, but the increase of long blonde hair in the water was noticeable. Girls were everywhere. And they were ripping!

I was so excited – never had I seen so many girls in the water with me! How cool. After my surf I ran down to the surf shop to buy myself a ZigZag, our local surf mag, expecting to see at least some photos of these local girls surfing, but alas, not one. My heart literally sank. Why were these girls being ignored?

With the spirit of both Mary the Goddess and Eve the sinner in my blood, I decided that I would make my own girls surfing magazine and show these men what these young girls could do. And I did. 4 awesome issues, 12,000 copies and R150,000 worth of self-sourced advertising revenue later – and I was broke. I won’t go into detail here, but industry politics and the big guns took me down. They broke my spirit and I felt like an absolute failure to the core. A failure to all these beautiful surfers who deserved to be seen. Looking back now I can see that it all happened as it should have, it’s funny how things have a way of making sense so many years down the line.

The break up.

The closing down of the magazine was a big turning point for me. I also haven’t yet mentioned my boyfriend. At this point in the story we were 7 years deep in our relationship. We were young lovers that thought we’d surely grow old together. But that wasn’t meant to be. The loss of the magazine came first, and that changed me. I grew up a lot and wasn’t sure what I wanted from life anymore, but I knew I needed to be alone. Breaking up with the man I thought I’d one day marry proved to be even harder than losing the magazine and I decided to flee to California and stay with my Uncle for a break from life.

Getting lost.

California was amazing. My Uncle lived in Orange County, the OC baby. You can only imagine what I got up to. One day, he gave me the keys to his car and some fake directions and told me to go get ice-cream for everyone. Driving on the wrong side of the road, in a massive SUV, I got lost! And he did it on purpose. There was no Google Maps back then and I was so pissed at him. It was his version of tough love – I had to stop and ask people how to get to the ice-cream shop and then I had to work out how to get back home. When I got back he said to me, “So what, you didn’t die! Eat your ice-cream and chill out.” At the time I wanted to punch him, but after a while I realized he was right. I didn’t die. And I started applying that to anything that was slightly scary to me (which was a lot!). You’re not going to die.

The return and alcohol.

Things get a bit blurry here, because as much as I had realized that I wasn’t going to die, I had also discovered that alcohol made everything feel much better and that when drunk, I was a wonderful dancer with a great personality that everyone loved.

I moved out of my parent’s house and in with a good friend. And we knew how to party. We also knew how to work hard and make money, so combine that with expensive wine and you’ve got a winning formula, or so we thought.

Honestly, when I think back to these years it’s a wonder how I didn’t get injured really badly or have something worse happen to me. The amount of times I drove drunk still makes me shudder. I felt unbreakable.

The shooting.

One afternoon, we were drinking at the restaurant where my housemate worked, very chilled, when in came these rather dodgy looking young guys with caps on, pulled down quite low over their faces. Living in South Africa, we’re quite aware of our reality and I think we’re quite a street smart bunch, and we just knew something was up.

I told my friend that I had a bad feeling about them and she said she felt the same. Our intuition had overpowered the wine and we just knew something bad was about to go down.

All of a sudden we were all on the floor and there was a man with a gun standing about 3 metres away from me. It was dead quiet and we just heard some shouting and banging coming from the Managers desk, where the cash was. It was such a strange scene, I remember not even feeling scared, just totally aware and as if everything was happening in slow motion.

Seconds seemed like minutes. Eventually we heard them running out, and just when we thought it was all over, the gun went off. I can’t remember how many times, but it was a few. And then the chaos and screaming started as the kitchen staff had all seen what had happened and it was more than likely all a too familiar scene for them. The Manager had tried to trip the one youngster and catch him as he ran out of the restaurant and he turned around and shot at him and unfortunately didn’t miss. Thankfully he survived.

A much needed wake-up call.

This event kind of jolted me into realizing how short life is. I was 25 years old with nothing to show for it and nothing great achieved. All I was doing was drinking my life away and spending all my money on partying. Something had to change.

I moved into my own place, out of the party scene and right down to the beach. Back to the ocean where my heart was at. I woke up early everyday, ate a healthy breakfast, surfed, hung out with some very cool entrepreneurs, worked hard and drank a lot less.

The serial entrepreneur and self-help obsession.

I had to replace the partying with something that made me feel good and so self-help books it was. Quite honestly I can say I owe a big portion of why I am where I am today to Danielle LaPorte and Marie Forleo. Incredible women doing such great work in the world and their words were just life changing for me. It was the push I needed to steer me in the right direction and I still live my life according to the principles of Danielle’s Desire Map, and I run my business based on the business model of Marie Forleo’s B-School program.

Therapy.

I’m putting therapy in here because I think there are certain things self-help books can’t help you with and there were certain things I really needed help with because the repetitive patterns were just killing my soul and I found an angel named Anni who really helped me to gain a clearer perspective on life and love. Thank you Anni.

How I got to here.

There is so much more to write but I feel at peace leaving my story here because from here on, things got much better. Not to say there were no hard times, or that there are no hard times now, because there were so so many really hard times, but from this point in my story, I had made a conscious decision, and it was big.

God was not a man in the sky, judging my every move. He was not a man that would save me from all my sins, giving me a way out from doing all the harm I was doing to myself and others. I did not have to pay for Eve’s sins or suffer guilt on her behalf. I couldn’t just say a prayer and all would be forgiven. I was responsible for me and my life and no amount of praying was going to change that. I also decided that God did not “have a plan for me” but that I had a plan for me. I decided that sex was not evil but actually beautiful, when shared with the right person, whether married or not. I decided that the pill was disconnecting me from all that I was and I wanted to actually learn to understand my body and what it meant to be a woman.

And in deciding all of this, I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders. I finally felt free from the heaviness of trying to live my life a certain way and getting it completely wrong. I felt so much more open to the world and all that it had to offer. I didn’t even have to get into the ocean to feel how much it rejuvenated me, I just had to be near it. I learnt about living in the moment and only for the moment, because everything else doesn’t exist anymore. And that it’s only what we do in this moment, and this moment, and this moment, for infinity, that determines what is possible tomorrow.

I also started to see the pain and struggle of the world. I saw how privileged I am to live the life that I do and I became so much more grateful and humbled by other people less fortunate, who still manage a smile everyday.

I believe in love. I believe in nature. I believe in human beings. For me that is God. And I think at the end of the day, we’re all looking for something to believe in. Something that we understand, trust in and believe to be true.