A part from a few years during my late teens, I have spent my whole life believing I was unsexy. I wasn’t elegant or poised - I was messy and chaotic. As I strived for success in a business I created, I shut off my emotions to appear strong. I was fiercely independent and the fact that I was a woman didn’t even cross my mind. The world told me I needed to switch off my femininity and switch on a linear and consistent outer shell.
When I turned 30, after punishing my body in the gym and restricting my food intake in a bid to achieve the ‘perfect’ body, I was anxious, exhausted, without a menstrual cycle, in a relationship that was falling apart and with a damaged disc in my back. I was so disconnected from myself that I pushed through workouts in agonising pain. Emotionally, I was empty; depleted of life force, sexual and creative energy - the things that I now see as innate superpowers. There was a void, something missing, but I couldn’t work out what it was.